Hey prickly pear people we are so excited to be back for our 5th Annual Prickly Pear Festival, returning to the Gutierrez Hubbell House (6029 Isleta Blvd SW) for another festival filled with food, art, music, and more celebrating everything prickly pear. We've got all kinds of things for cooks and eaters with cooking demos, tastings, and vendor market and this year we’re packing everything into one with programming for farmers, ranchers, and gardeners all in the same day! And we’ve got quite the day in store for you.

We’ll have a stocked vendor market with 60 plus vendors selling all kinds of prickly pear eats, treats, arts, crafts, bath & body products and more. Then for our prickly pear cooks and eaters we’ll have cooking demos from Israel Rivera, the chef and owner of The Shop, and from our partners at Three Sisters Kitchen. A refreshing prickly pear cocktail and mocktail demo, with Paige Alvarez of Sugar Moon Syrups and folks from Hollow Spirits Distillery. As well as a full prickly pear cocktail class with Hollow Spirits (tickets sold separately here).Then registered dietitian and owner of Tumbleweed Nutrition, Denee Bex, will be talking to folks about some of the nutritional benefits of prickly pear and their role in functional diets, as well as their place in diets of Native and Indigenous communities of the Southwest.

Throughout the day we’ll two different prickly per arts and crafts activies. Including two prickly pear print making works from OffCenter Arts as well as two natural dye workshops with Kalyn Finnell, using natural dye from cochineal, the prickly pear cactus insect (sign up to reserve your spot here).

Finally, to round out the afternoon, coming to our prickly pear stage, we’ll have performances by Ailani, Almost Always Never, and Gold Tides.

Then inside the Hubbell House we'll have all our programming focused for farmers, ranchers, and gardners including a talk from former Albuquerque Botanic Garden curator, Dave Ferguson on prickly pear propagation and care.

As well as a talk around using prickly pear and other arid adapted crops in agricultural systems and receiving funding for these kinds of sustainable practices with Lorenzo Dominguez owner of Hacienda Dominguez & Chelenzo Farms

A workshop on starting or growing an add-value food business using prickly pear with Amber Benson-Lehmer, part of NMSU's Bernalillo County Extension. And finally, a talk by the team at the Mexican prickly pear nopal company Kactas Foods.

We hope you’ll join us for this year’s festival!