A fun weekend at the farm: Crazy headgear at Farm Festival

Well, I went to Farm Festival, guys, and it was pretty cool.

As I arrived at Gilcombe Farm on Friday, I was instantly struck by Farm Festival’s unique charms – a fun, creative atmosphere that’s similar to one that you’d experience at Glasto, but for a fraction of the price. Balloons up to the rafters in the music tent, hand-painted artwork popping up all over the place – you could really feel the love that had gone into creating this event. Even the dustbins were individually decorated and painted.

Music favourites for the weekend were Chicago-based The Electric on Saturday night, who were all about really old-school rap and strong R & B vocals from their female vocalist, who really had a set of pipes on her. The ensemble is the new musical venture from rapper DJ Vadim – for an idea of how they sounded, you can check his stuff out on Spotify.The rap/vocals combination was a bit like N-Dubz, except really good and not embarrassing. Other bands such as Manchester-based dance darlings Egyptian Hip Hop and Wild Palms also put on a good show. The only hitch was trying to dance without spilling my cider.

There was also some pretty great shopping opportunities about; I spent a long time looking about the vintage clothing stalls with my boyfriend and friends. We picked up some great bargains. My friend picked up a vintage 1970s orange and gold jumpsuit (very Nicole Richie) for the meagre sum of seven quid, while I found a Missoni-style knitted tank top and oversized denim shirt for three pounds each. I would say Farm Festival was worth it for the vintage alone – unlike many shops in London, where you’d pay up to fifty or sixty pounds for one item, I couldn’t see anything priced over a tenner and the clothes were actually nice.

Similarly to the event’s creators, the festival-goers put an equal amount of love into their appearance – there were some dope hats in circulation this weekend. Hats were piled high with flowers, feathers, fruit and, in keeping with the farm theme, farm animals. My personal favourite was the woman we dubbed as “Sunflower Lady” (we didn’t realise she was actually meant to be a daffodil, but the nickname stuck), who donned a giant daffodil hat with a green dress. She was a beam of happiness on a quite grey Somerset weekend. Probably most notable for sheer effort were the family of dolphins at Gilcombe Farm – a group of fifteen-odd festivalers all tangled up in a giant blue fishing net together, each wearing their own dolphin hat/sculpture made out of tinfoil. They even walked like they were dolphins. The UK did us proud this weekend – all of Farm Fest, young and old, little and large, were turned out in headgear that Lady Gaga would be proud of.

Thanks for a good weekend, Farm Festival – I’ll see you next year.

Click below for some images of Farm Festival.