Many of Colorado’s communities have summer festivals dedicated to the crops that have been increasing the profile of the state’s farm-to-table restaurants. Our chief specialty is fruit — Colorado’s warm days and cool summer nights mean everything grows a little bit sweeter than it would at warmer climes. Below are some of the festivals, spectacles and events that make tasting Colorado fun and delicious.
1. Strawberry Days
What started as a picnic to celebrate the area’s strawberry harvest and meet new neighbors more than 126 years ago has grown into a full-on strawberry-themed affair. Each June, celebrate Strawberry Days with a parade, a juried arts-and-crafts fair, live music, family activities and free strawberries and ice cream — a tradition that’s held since the very beginning.
2. Paonia Cherry Days
When you hear the following words, nothing that comes after will matter: cherry cook-off. We can’t imagine needing anything else from Paonia Cherry Days, but this event piles the festivities high each July with a 5K run, cornhole and softball tournaments, a pit-spitting competition and a Fourth of July parade.
3. Olathe Sweet Corn Festival
The regional corn celebrated at Olathe Sweet Corn Festival is often described as melt-in-your-mouth tender. A slathering of butter would only compromise what Colorado’s sun and soil have already perfected. Find out what makes people speak so rapturously about it at the August festival’s sweet-corn-eating contest. And afterward, while you’re putting all those toothpicks to good work, enjoy concerts, a potato-sack race, recipe contests and karaoke competitions.
4. Telluride Mushroom Festival
Scheduled for August, when mushroom growth is at its peak, hundreds of mycophiles descend on Telluride Mushroom Festival to soak up technical mushroom science, go on foraging expeditions, attend special dinners and participate in workshops.
5. Palisade Peach Festival
Much like Olathe’s sweet corn, Palisade’s peaches have been known to inspire gastric poetry, memorable limericks and devotional dances. Best described as drip-down-your-chin juicy, the perfect peach is celebrated in all its incarnations at August's Palisade Peach Festival. Restaurants deck out their menus with libations, desserts and other peachy dishes. Peach-lovers revel in the fun with orchard tours, an ice-cream social and field dinners.
6. Watermelon Day
Part of the Arkansas Valley Fair, Watermelon Day honors that sweetest of all melons with 5K and 10K runs, a watermelon-seed-spitting contest (you’ve been on the amateur circuit for years — it’s time to go pro!), watermelon carving, a bingo tournament and a famous “watermelon pile,” from which you can take a few free melons to slurp from on the way home.
7. Greeley Potato Days
The annual Greeley Potato Days celebration in September goes beyond feasting on the versatile spud with living history activities like blacksmithing and adobe brick making, swing dancers, live music and appearances by the Potato King and Queen. Treats for sale include baked potatoes with your choice of delicious toppings, root beer floats, popcorn and a variety of homemade delights.
8. Pueblo Chile and Frijoles Festival
Septembers Pueblo Chile and Frijoles Festival is your best chance to taste of pride of Pueblo: a special, intensely flavorful variety of green chile. Served smoking on a stick, chopped and tucked into a quesadilla or sprinkled in salsa, it’s the star of this show. Cooking competitions, live music, dancing, a jalepeño-eating competition, a chihuahua parade and a farmers’ market round out the festivities.
9. Potato Day
Potato Day — an October harvest celebration honoring the stalwart potato — dates back to 1909 and now serves to ring in fall with a 5K Tator/Fossil Trot, farmers’ market, live music, horseshoe tournament, a bareback horse-riding competition and an infamous Potato Day Parade with dance troupes, trick horses and marching bands. A community barbecue picnic features, of course, baked potatoes and locally raised beef brisket roasted in fire pits.
10. AppleFest
Driving into Cedaredge, you’ll pass row after heavenly row of trees bursting with shiny red and green apples beckoning you to sink your teeth in — and pick one up for the ol’ teacher, “Leave it To Beaver”-style. At October's AppleFest, a multitude of vendors share the area’s agricultural wealth with visitors, who can also check out bands, the beer garden and a golf tournament. Another small town, Penrose, has an Apple Day of its own on in early October, with a parade and a pie-eating contest.
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