3rd annual Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival - a benefit for Delaware Wild Lands

The 3^rd annual Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival will include five regional and nationally-known bluegrass bands, food trucks, local beer and wines, craft vendors, a native plant sale, and free bus tours through Delaware Wild Lands’ (DWL) Great Cypress Swamp.
                                           
The festival will benefit DWL, Delaware’s oldest and largest non-profit land conservation organization. Festival grounds are on a farm in Sussex County, at the edge of the Great Cypress Swamp, the largest forest on the Delmarva Peninsula. DWL owns and manages 10,600 contiguous acres of the Swamp, which straddles the Delaware-Maryland state border.
                                                                                                                                                                       
This year’s headliner will be Johnny Staats & the Delivery Boys from West Virginia. Staats is a world-class mandolin, guitar, and fiddle player. He’s been featured on NBC’s Today Show, CBS Evening News, and CNN; in The New York Times and People magazine. Staats and his band have performed multiple times on NPR’s nationally-broadcast show, Mountain Stage, and at the Grand Ole Opry.
 
Four additional bluegrass bands will play sets throughout the day:
 
New & Spare Fools – a collection of all-star musicians from the Delmarva region, this band is Mickey Justice and Todd Smith of Such Fools, Jon Simmons and Martin Wirtz of New and Used Bluegrass, and Wes Parks of No Spare Time.
           
Acoustic Turnpike – well-known in bluegrass circles of Northern Delaware and Southern New Jersey, members of this band are active in Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music, the organization that hosted the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival for decades.
 
Flatland Drive – returning again for 2018, this local band is a festival favorite, combining traditional, hard-driving bluegrass with modern stylings.
 
Mountain Ride – new to the Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival, this group of young and dynamic musicians from southcentral Pennsylvania will also be appearing in Delaware at the 2018 Wilmington Wintergrass Festival.
 
Food Trucks & Drinks
This year’s food trucks will tempt every taste. Dixie's Down Home Cooking is new to the food truck scene, but owners Bill and Kim Newsom have more than 27 years of food industry experience. Kim learned lots of special family recipes from her Aunt Helen, founder of Helen’s Famous Sausage House in Smyrna. Truck It Food Truck from Georgetown will be serving up their renowned grilled cheese and meatball sandwiches. Ice cream made by several Delaware creameries will available at a new food truck from The Blue Scoop (Selbyville/Fenwick) and delicious homemade pastries will be offered by The Blue Hen Baker. A new coffee roaster from Rehoboth, called Rising Rooster Coffee will have bags of beans and serve samples of his eye-opening brews.
 
Festival attendees will be able to quench their thirst with Dogfish Head beer and wines from Nassau Valley Vineyards.
 
Stump the Plant Expert and Plant Sale
New this year will be a native plant sale hosted by How Sweet It Is, a garden center in Eden, MD. Bring your toughest plant questions to the festival for free advice from a nationally-known horticultural expert. Richard Davis will be on hand at the plant sale to chat with festival guests throughout the day.

Art beyond music
Woodworking fans will be pleased to know Michael O’Grady is returning this year with his beautiful and functional homewares. Michael and his team from Middletown will offer woodworking pieces made from trees DWL harvested from the Great Cypress Swamp.
 
Larry Quillen from Just Jonesin’ Artistic Furnishings will offer his distinctive mosaic art. His pieces are for hanging on the wall, on furniture, and on guitars.
 
Bus tours through the Swamp
Tickets to the Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival also include the opportunity to ride a guided bus tour looping through the Great Cypress Swamp. DWL is actively restoring forests, wetlands, and wildlife habitat in this unusual ecosystem. DWL’s land managers will be on the bus to answer questions and explain more about the history and ecology of the Swamp.
 
Delaware Wild Lands is committed to long-term and large-scale habitat restoration in the Swamp. They have planted 198,000 trees here since 2011, improving one of the most important natural resources on the Delmarva Peninsula. Traditional uses continue on the land, including sustainable forestry, farming, and hunting. This forward-thinking management approach is reversing decades of degradation, and rehydrating hundreds of acres of wetland habitat. 
 
A plethora of wildlife and birds are now thriving in the Great Cypress Swamp including: Wild Turkey, Red-headed Woodpeckers, River Otter, Carpenter Frogs, Bald Eagles, Wood Ducks, Teal, and several other species of waterfowl.
                                                                                                                                   
DWL is grateful to the sponsors of this year’s Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival:

• Sandpiper Energy, a subsidiary of Chesapeake Utilities
• Dogfish Head Beer
• Ocean View Builders
• Chris Martin, MD
• J.G. Townsend, Jr. & Co. Frozen Foods
• Tunnell Companies L.P.
• Delmarva Public Radio
• Morris James
• Tidewater Utilities
• DE Storage
• Chip & Debbie West
• Coastal Kayaks
• Coastal Tented Events