June is busting out all over, particularly with a bunch of festivals—food, music, and bees!

Set in beautiful Bryan Park, the Vegetarian Festival is a true delight. Don’t think that it’s a bunch of skinny people gnawing on rabbit food. Nay! There is plenty of meatless food, meatless comfort food, and meatless dessert (thank goodness) for all sorts of palates. Rescue one of the pigs bound for the Bacon Festival and bring to the sign-in tent for free admission. I jest, it is all free (food’ll cost you), and I think those pigs have been goners for awhile now.

Saturday, June 20th • 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Azalea Gardens, Bryan Park

Free to attend!

Down home good times, with the Charlie Daniels Band, the Swon Brothers, Austin Webb, and Cedar Creek. Plus a demolition derby?! And a cornhole tournament? Woooo-weeee! This sounds more fun than watching a pair of pigs try to escape the Bacon Fest!

Saturday, June 20th • 3:00 PM

Meadow Event Park, 13111 Dawn Boulevard, Doswell

$25 for adults, $10 for children (buy tickets online)

The nonprofit arts and culture community consistently produces some of the coolest things yet makes some of the lowest amounts of money. To promote the great works, the Xpo features exhibitors from arts/culture organizations doing their thing, and food trucks doing theirs.

Saturday, June 27th • 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM

Science Museum of Virginia, 2500 W. Broad Street

Free to attend!

Beekeeping is the next big thing (or is the current big thing?). Meet real live bees and the people who keep them (who are also real life), and learn how to become one of them (or how to just make a bee-friendly backyard). As their slogan says “We are all beekeepers, whether we know it or not.” Fresh honey, bee-friendly plants, and more for sale.

Saturday, June 27th • 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Nature Center at Rockwood Park, 3401 Courthouse Road

Free!

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Previously

Did your CSA stop giving you strawberries already? Did you weep like a tiny, berry-obsessed baby? Head north to Ashland’s annual Strawberry Faire. It’s got a pageant, it’s got arts and crafts, it’s got food vendors, it’s got a PET pageant, and it’s got plenty of blueberries. Ugh, sorry, I always mess that up.

Saturday, June 6th • 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Randolph-Macon College, 204 Henry Street, Ashland

Free to attend!

This mega-popular festival combines two of the best possible things: soul music and soul food. We should really consider making this standard at every festival. Get tickets now, or run the risk of missing Jodeci.

Saturday, June 6th • 1:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Classic Amphitheater at Richmond International Raceway Complex, 600 E. Laburnum Avenue

$45 (buy tickets online)

It is here, the steaming hot festival filled with small plates of food for you to eat from, like, all your fave places! You and every single other person you know will bump into each other, declare that you MUST try X pizza from Y booth, and then move about your merry way! Suggest you leave plenty of time to find parking, and suggest you wear massive amounts of sunscreen.

Sunday, June 7th • 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM

Broad Street between Henry and Adams

Free to attend, dishes cost $3 a plate

It is what it is: a festival that celebrates bacon and all the various ways bacon can be incorporated into our foodstuffs. Poor pigs, you can’t help being so delicious. If only you tasted more like parsnips. Nobody has a parsnip festival.

Sunday, June 14th • 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM

17th Street Farmers Market, 17th and Main Streets

Free to attend!

Photo by: Brave Heart