Ivye Tomato Festival: Flamboyant parade and tasty records in the ‘tomato capital’ of Belarus

What is the Belarusian town of Ivye famous for? Where can we try the juiciest tomatoes? And when can we start harvesting the new crop? You could learn this if you visited the Ivye Tomato Festival that gathered hundreds of tomato lovers from all over Belarus on 18 August.

Two years ago, Belarus’ gastronomic map that already features the cucumber festival in Shklov welcomed a new thematic event – a tomato festival in Ivye. Every year local farmers harvest over 4,500 tonnes of this vitamin-rich vegetable. It is noteworthy that vegetable growing has a long history in Ivye: vegetable farming was started by Tatars who were invited by Vytautas the Great in the 14th century to protect the border of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Local residents don’t only specialize in growing this much-loved vegetable, but also arrange a tasty fest with many surprises. This year the festival kicked off with a Tomato Boom procession featuring flamboyant characters, like Tomatoes and Junior Tomatoes, who passed by on a red retro bus, a mini-tractor and even a cart. After that, visitors were invited to take part in the contests for the best carnival costume and the best original recipe and to choose the Tomato Lord of the Village.

Ivye District officially chose the biggest tomato of the region. The 1.165kg champion tomato dubbed as Cavalier Pomodoro was grown by Galina Shagidevich. After that a gigantic tomato sandwich was cooked. The 4.25-meter long sandwich astonished even the organizers of the festival. According to a tradition, the first jar of new crop tomatoes was pickled on the main stage. The festival wrapped up with flying a tomato air balloon.

The ‘juiciest’ shots of the Ivye Tomato Festival in our photo report