Around mid October for the past seven years I’ve noticed modest hand-written little signs here and there announcing the fête de la courge in a nearby village.  And for six of those seven years I’ve thought we ought to see what it was all about but the date always passed and somehow we never made it.

This year however….drumroll….we made it to the “Squash Fair”!  Yes, that is what the “fête de la courge” translates as.  A courge is a squash, so the fair celebrates the whole spectrum of different squashes, from gourdes to enormous marrows taking in a lot of big fat orange pumpkins. Let’s take a look at this autumn pumpkin fair.

autumn pumpkin fair

In its tenth year this year, the fête is the biggest autumn fair in the locality, attracting some ten thousand visitors and involving two tonnes of pumpkins and 1000 litres of soup!

Amongst the stalls selling all manner of things orange were pumpkin carving workshops and face-painting for children. The setting is hard to beat – the pretty medieval village of Châteauneuf-de-Grasse – and my whole family, including grandparents, enjoyed an original and slightly amusing Sunday morning out.

We bought a great big pumpkin to carve for Halloween and best of all, a bag of ready-chopped butternut squash chunks from a green-haired lady with an orange mini moke!

I’ll leave you with some photos – all very orange!

autumn pumpkin fair

      autumn pumpkin fair

      man with pumpkin

    autumn pumpkin fair

    jams and chutneys at autumn pumpkin fair

                  kids playing on pumpkins

                pumpkins for sale

    autumn pumpkin fair

 

witches at autumn pumpkin fair

                  pumpkin pie

      pumpkins in wheelbarrow

 

pumpkins

                  pumpkin soup at autumn pumpkin fair

 

autumn pumpkin fair

You can find out more about the fête de la courge here (updated annually around September/October).  Do you enjoy going to seasonal fairs like this? Does your area have anything similar?

Related Reading:

Transhumance, Autumn and a hill-top village

Orange Festival on the French Riviera – la fête de l’oranger

Medieval festival – Knights Templar on the Côte d’Azur

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autumn pumkin fair | Lou Messugo

 

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