Culver Oregon’s Crawdad Festival has returned after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic.
“Oh boy. It’s a small lobster,” said Culver city Councilor Gretchen Schlie on what a Crawdad is.
“That’s what I am calling it. Crayfish, also known as a crayfish. Also known as a mud, a mud bug.”
Saturday’s Festival will consist of a parade, bingo, a beer garden, live music, 60 different vendors and several other activities.
It will be held at Veterans Memorial Park from 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.
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“We are doing things a little bit different, for example we are having a food truck actually do the crawdads instead of trying to find hundreds of thousands of volunteers and volunteer hours to home in and do it,” said Schlie.
Mariah Larson, owner of Teriyaki Grill and Mom’s Kitchen and Catering Company says 200 ears of corn were shucked and 400 pounds of potatoes rinsed and chopped.
“We did a thousand pounds of crawdads this year and I have had countless amounts of people tell me it’s not enough, they want more,” Larson said. “So, we will see how it goes, maybe next year, we will double the dosage and see what happens.”
All the crawdads come straight from Lake Billy Chinook.
“The way that the crawdads are harvested here locally, they are netted and they are kept in the water until it is time to put them on ice and bring them to us,” said Lasrson. “So, they can’t get any more fresh than that.”
The festival has been going on for more than 30 years.
It started with local family and friends coming together and eventually grew bigger and bigger.
“I just think it helps bring the community together and that’s the main purpose of this to just to bring the community together, especially after so many years of being isolated,” said Schlie.
The Crawdad Boil costs $28 if you buy tickets in advance. Several other food carts will also be available.
Live music with musician Matt Borden is 5-7 p.m.
