Garrett's Blog - "FARM-AID!!!"

Last Friday we made an appearance at a dance party on a pier near W. 68th St. in New York City. Jill, from Sunfood Nutrition, invited us to park our bus in front of the entrance to the pier and open our doors to everyone who walked, or danced, by. We spent the first part of the night enjoying the live rhythms of the Body Temple Drummers accompanied by a few different DJs mixing in their own style of music and beats. Later, when the music stopped and people began to disperse, Will hooked up his turntables to our stored solar power and kept the party going . . . ON OUR BUS! We must have had 20 people on the bus and a bunch more dancing outside, waiting for their chance to check it out. After a long drive earlier that morning we were extremely relieved to see the last person leave, because we still had to drive to Randall's Island that night to get set up for Farm-Aid!

The morning of the festival we all woke up sweaty and covered in mosquito bites, but who cares, we were there! As we were hanging banners and setting up tables, displays, etc. Nikki heard a familiar voice doing sound checks - it was Dave Matthews! He was doing a practice set with Tim Reynolds and we were allowed to walk right up to the stage to enjoy the pre-show! It was so cool to watch them play 20 feet away from me with only about 30 other people around. Once the show started we had a constant stream of people at the bus so it was hard to leave for more than a few minutes to watch any one person perform, but it was great to see the excitement in everyone's face who came by the bus - there were even a few who didn't want to leave when it was time to shutdown for the night!

We met a lot of new people and saw a few old friends from our tour through NY. We had a great spot right next to the tent of one of our sponsors, Organic Valley, AND a "secret" (much appreciated) port-o-potty just around the corner, haha! At sunset we closed up shop - we had run out of samples around 3pm - and set out to enjoy the rest of the show; the Allman Bros., Dave Matthews, John Mellencamp, Neil Young, and finally Willie Nelson finished off the night. It was an amazing day that we felt privileged to be a part of . . . we also felt privileged at the end of it when we almost crawled from exhaustion to our home which was allowed to stay on the concert grounds when everyone else had to leave. If not for the non-stop days prior and our 8-hour drive to Charlottesville, VA the following day we probably would have found our way on one of the artist's buses for some backstage treatment!

This week we've been enjoying the nice people of Virigina and Maryland and are currently enroute to the Shenandoah Valley to spend our two days off camping in the great outdoors!

Peace and Love,
Garrett