Phew, they arrived, just in time

Everyone who comes to The Fat of the Land will get a free badge, a bit like the ones in the poorly executed photograph here.

Harvesting veg this morning

Kay and I went to the outrageously lovely East London community vegetable garden What Will The Harvest Be? to harvest some veg for a hamper for the Fat of the Land Raffle. We picked celeriac, celery, carrots, some spuds, amazing kale, chard and squash, some herbs and greens, beetroot too. Yummmmmmm and thanks to Chris at the project and everyone who's been growing things there over the summer.

It's tomorrow!

It's going to be amazing! Do come!

Here's a map:


View Larger Map

There will be some planned engineering works on the underground tomorrow, so it might be worth using the Journey Planner to find a good route to us.

Sublime and ridiculous

DIVA are going to be at The Fat of the Land: A Queer Chub Harvest Festival this Saturday. they've made a cut-out cover of their current fat issue for you to poke your head through. You too can be a glamazon lesbo high femme magazine cover chubber. Amazing.

Fat of the Land Schedule

2pm
Our Guest of Honour BJ will open The Fat of the Land.

2-4.30pm
* Art, activities, conversation, displays, eating, information, marvelling and mingling, poetry, tea-drinking and our wonderful stalls.
* Buy yourself a spot as a guest judge in our competitions
* Enter your home-made jams, chutneys, decorated cupcakes, cakes (fancy and teatime) and vegetable monsters into the competitions. These will be judged at 4pm.
* Buy raffle tickets and win amazing prizes.
* Donate unwanted weight loss paraphernalia to the Diet Bin of Doom.

4pm
Competition judging

4.30pm
Competition, raffle and silent auction winners announced.

5pm
Entertainment provided by The 123s, Scottee, and Chopin. Singing of the Fat Queer Harvest Hymn.

5.30pm
Special guests The Blackhorse and Standard Women’s North West Morris will close the event with some dancing.

A crazy lady from Oregon sends her love

Dear Fat o'the Landers:

After sending this e-mail out, I am shipping myself to you inside this enormous pumpkin so that I may arrive in time for this incredible Queer Chub Harvest Festival. Please handle with care. It has seen better days.

Then I will pop out spitting pumpkin seeds into carnival games and giggle and chortle and pull carrots and eat Chubster jam with my orange-stained hands. I'll try not to set the barn on fire.

What can I say, I am flat out gleeful that this is happening, bereft at not being able to attend, and no doubt will have to celebrate by baking a gigantic slog* in your honor and sharing it with the fat queers of my own community to celebrate in solidarity.

With mad love,
Petunia

* - Not cakey enough for a buckle, slump or grunt, I've coined "slog" to describe a wet fruit crisp that runs over with juice and becomes irrepressibly soggy

Charlotte says PS, one of our raffle prizes is a giant vegetable growing kit, don't forget to buy a ticket, you too could hide yourself inside a massive pumpkin

Wanna be a Judge?

You Could Be Fat of the Land Competition Judge

It's not just the official judges who will be judging the Fat of the Land competitions, there are some special guest judging spots up for grabs too. You could be a judge! You could have first bite and first taste! Here's how…

There are seven precious and exclusive guest judge spots for sale. You will be judging competition entries alongside our official fat of the Land judges.

The guest judge spots cost £10 or £5 concessions.

Once these seven places have been sold, they are gone forever.

You can notify Charlotte, the competitions person, beforehand if you want to be a judge. Send her an email: mail@charlottecooper.net

Or you can offer your judging capabilities and cash on the day.

Judging will take place at 4pm sharp, and winners will be announced at 4.30pm.

Please let Charlotte know if you have a preferred category.

Best Jam
Best Chutney
Best Decorated Cupcakes
Best Cake (Fancy)
Best Cake (Teatime)
Best Vegetable Monster (Junior) – aged 12 and under
Best Vegetable Monster (Senior) – aged 12 and over

Please note that people will know if you are both a judge and a competition entrant, and if you judge your own entry to be the winner it will be deemed bad form!

The Fat of the Land is taking over the media one magazine at a time

Oh look, we're a Critic's Choice in this week's Time Out.

NB The harvest festival runs from 2-6pm, not 8 as listed.

The Fat of the Land is taking over the internet one website at a time

Oh look, an interview with me on Gaydarnation.com, boast boast.

Here's more boastage, care of Anglofiles and Londonist too.

How to Enter Fat of the Land Competitions: A step-by-step guide

The competition categories are:

Best Jam
Best Chutney
Best Decorated Cupcakes
Best Cake (Fancy)
Best Cake (Teatime)
Best Vegetable Monster (Junior) – aged 12 and under
Best Vegetable Monster (Senior) – aged 12 and over

1. Make some stuff that fits those categories, use whatever judgement and recipes you like.

2. Remember that you can enter more than one competition and, if you're really enthusiastic, you can enter competitions more than once.

3. Bring your makings to the Fat of the Land before 3.30pm.

4. Tell the competitions person (Charlotte, most likely) if it's okay for the Fat of the Land to sell or auction your entry to help us cover our costs. Winning entries will be auctioned in aid of the harvest festival, runners-up will be sold at a price you agree.

5. Write your name, contact details and, if relevant, a price, on a sticker, which will be generously provided by your harvest festival organisers.

6. Stick the sticker underneath your entry, so the judges can judge each entry anonymously.

7. Place your entry on the space provided for harvest festival goers to admire.

8. Judging will take place at 4pm and winners will be announced at 4.30pm and will receive their winning certificates.

9. If you are neither auctioning nor selling your entry, you may take it away with you after 4.30pm.

10. Good luck!

Kay's Jammy and Karrotty Thrills!

Kay 'Butch Husky' Hyatt has been busy this weekend making two dozen jars of Chubster jam as well as getting her Krazy Karrots game ready. The jam is made from damsons from the tree in Kay's garden and will be for sale at the Fat of the Land. You'll have to wait until next Saturday to find out how the Karrots work. Will the harvest thrills ever end?

The Diet Box of Doom

I remember going to harvest festivals when I was a kid with a tin of some unwanted food to put into a crepe paper-covered box for 'the needy'. This was usually some random group of old or disabled people who hadn't asked for our somewhat stingy charity and who would have been better off with civil rights than a dusty can of rice pudding from the back of my family's cupboard.

But a harvest festival is a festival of giving that comes from being glad of what we have, yet also slightly condescending to those whom we perceive to have less than us, and wanting them to be grateful for our beneficence. We want to uphold this tradition at the Fat of the Land, and give to those who are less well-off than ourselves, the somewhat tragic, the people and organisations who just don't get it.

We're going to be giving some queer chub action back to the diet industry.

The Fat of the Land will feature a Diet Box of Doom, a place where you can leave unwanted slimming ephemera, as well as any other non-perishables you'd like to donate. This will then be given to a weight loss multinational, or an odious diet guru voted for by people at the Fat of the Land.

What to bring:

Diet books and magazines, calorie counting accessories, weight loss recipes, tape measures, diet scales, weighing scales, defaced slimming advertisements, laxatives, personal accounts of dieting, stories of body fascism, pictures, poems, food diaries, videos and DVDs, diet sheets, clothes that you bought to slim into but never managed to fit, anything that you'd like people who profit from dieting to know or to have, or whatever you think should go into a Diet Box of Doom.

What will happen:

When we have voted for a recipient, Charlotte will package up the box nicely and deliver it by hand to the company's UK CEO or guru at their headquarters. This will be documented on the Fat of the Land blog.

Stalls at the Fat of the Land

We've got some amazing stalls at the Fat of the Land, with stuff for you to buy, stuff to eat, stuff at which to marvel, and displays of crafts and activities that are close to our queer chub hearts.

Not only will you be able to buy zines, but there'll be a zine display and you'll be able to make a zine on the day too. Naughty and Nice Cakes are likely to be popular, and Anna Small is bringing her crafts – double pleasure whammy. Blackwells are bringing a selection of Fat of the Land books for you to snap up (they accept plastic too) and DIVA mag, whose Fat issue is now out, are going to be doing the tombola. We've got displays of stonemasonry and quilting, there will be Yay! Scales for you to try out thanks to the crowd from Health At Every Size UK, a Krazy Karrots game, and some mad things that don't have a name yet. And we've got a lot of tea that needs drinking.

Simon 'Weasel' Murphy has been busy making the Chubuzzer which will receive its inaugural outing at the Fat of the Land (see pic above). Homemade fat queer electronics projects! Yay! Dare you pit your wits against its buzzery goodness? How fiendishly difficult could it be? There'll be prizes for those who make it to the end.