Editorial: Plant & Sing
There is a very big party coming up this weekend to celebrate and support Sylvester Manor. Called “Plant & Sing,” it’s the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm’s fourth annual arts and food festival with all sorts of activities, musical and dramatic entertainment, talks, walks, readings, not to mention food, spread over three days from Friday through Sunday.
There will be a whole lot going on so it may be a little hard to get one’s arms around all of it merely by glancing at the ads and articles that have appeared in the Reporter this week and last week.
The best way to get a handle on it is to go to the event’s website at plantandsing.com. There’s a full schedule of events, ticket prices, a brochure with map and information about all the musical performers. Advance tickets for all three days are $60 for non-members, $50 for seniors and students; all-day Saturday tickets are $25, $20 for seniors and students; Sunday tickets, which include the performance at 6 p.m. by musical headliners Rufus Wainright and Martha Wainright — are $35, $30 for seniors and kids 16 and under.
So what’s all this fuss about?
If the brilliant Rufus and Martha Wainright aren’t enough to get you psyched, consider the food and drink: there will be barbecue from Vine Street; good healthy fixings from Greeny’s; and goodies from Hayground Mobile Pizza, Bedell Wines, Taste of the North Fork and Martine Abitbol’s Le Poeme.
On Friday, there will be a family contra dance followed by a “shuck and sing” at the Historical Society’s Havens House; on Saturday, music from bluegrass to blues and hollers and field songs will be offered from noon until evening. Meanwhile, there will be a creative writing workshop, tours of the 1732 manor house and grounds, readings by local historian Mac Griswald, a talk on the slow food movement, more prose and poetry readings and a staged reading of Joe Pintauro’s “Men’s Lives.”
Sunday will feature a gospel sing and farm tour, a yoga lesson and a free garlic planting. More music begins at 3 p.m. including the Wainrights at 6 p.m. and Joe Lauro & the Who Dat Loungers at 7 p.m. with a parade finale.
It’s a big, sprawling sort of blast for people who appreciate the unconventional, the original, the organic and the eye-opening — all words that apply to Sylvester Manor itself as it is reinvented in the middle of its fourth century as the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. Its mission is to promote sustainability in locally based agriculture as well as an appreciation for good healthy food.
Shelter Island needs the manor to succeed and the manor needs Shelter Island to do it. Its big fundraiser is not just for kids and crunchy-granolas! If there are some folks around town who aren’t sure what all this contra dancing and banjo picking and garlic planting is all about, get out to the manor this weekend and find out.
