This is Kind of a Big Dill…

Middle Tennessee’s Largest Pickle Festival returns to Murfreesboro on Saturday, September 5, bringing a full day of dill, crunch, and some gloriously questionable flavor combinations to Labor Day weekend.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Hop Springs turns the grounds along John Bragg Highway over to more than 150 vendors from six states, 15-plus food trucks and snack vendors, live music, contests, and enough pickle-inspired creations to make a plain spear look downright restrained.

Admission is $5 cash, with tickets and event information also available online.

How Pickled Are We Talking?

Classic and fried pickles are merely the opening act. The menu gets considerably stranger from there, with pickle lemonade, donuts, cheesecake, cotton candy, smoothies, flavored sodas, and other creations that take dill well beyond its usual job description.

There’s also plenty happening between bites. Competitive eaters can test their skills in pickle eating and pickle drinking contests, while shoppers can browse pickle-themed apparel, dips, salsa, scented products, and novelty goods. Even someone who draws the line well before pickle cheesecake can find something worth taking home.

The festival keeps the afternoon easy for families, too. A free petting zoo sponsored by Center Hill Plumbing & Septic joins the live music and other entertainment, and pets are welcome. For the latest details and updates are available, keep an eye on the festival’s Facebook event page.

For a festival built around one very specific food, there’s a surprising amount packed into six hours. You can make lunch out of the food trucks, browse vendors between bands, take the kids to the petting zoo, bring the dog along, or step up to a contest if eating pickles at a competitive pace happens to be your particular talent.

And really, a pickle festival should be willing to get a little weird. Nobody needs dill-flavored cotton candy or pickle cheesecake to make it through Labor Day weekend, which is precisely why trying one sounds more fun than ordering the usual. Come for whatever level of pickle enthusiasm suits you, whether that’s a fried spear or a full commitment to the smoothie.

At the very least, you’ll have a better answer when someone asks what you did over the holiday weekend than “not much.”

Discover more of Tennessee’s most flavorful festivals at https://www.guidetotennessee.com/festivals.