Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival set in Frankford May 19

The third annual Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival is set for 12 to 6 p.m., Saturday, May 19, on the Roman Fisher Farm, Frankford. Five regional and nationally known bluegrass bands will perform, and there will be food trucks, local beer and wines, craft vendors, a native plant sale and free bus tours through Delaware Wild Lands' Great Cypress Swamp.

The event will benefit Delaware Wild Lands, Delaware's oldest and largest nonprofit land conservation organization. Festival grounds are on a farm at the edge of the Great Cypress Swamp, the largest forest on the Delmarva Peninsula. DWL owns and manages 10,600 contiguous acres of the swamp, which straddles the Delaware-Maryland state border.

This year's headliner will be Johnny Staats & the Delivery Boys from West Virginia. Staats is a world-class mandolin, guitar and fiddle player. Staats and his band have performed multiple times on NPR's nationally broadcast show "Mountain Stage," and at the Grand Ole Opry.

Four additional bluegrass bands will play sets throughout the day.

New & Spare Fools comprises a collection of all-star musicians from the Delmarva region. They are Mickey Justice and Todd Smith of Such Fools, Jon Simmons and Martin Wirtz of New and Used Bluegrass, and Wes Parks of No Spare Time.

Acoustic Turnpike is well known in bluegrass circles of northern Delaware and southern New Jersey. Members of this band are active in Brandywine Friends of Old Time Music, the organization that has hosted the Delaware Valley Bluegrass Festival for decades.

Flatland Drive is returning for 2018. This local band is a festival favorite, combining traditional, hard-driving bluegrass with modern stylings.

Mountain Ride is group of young and dynamic musicians from south-central Pennsylvania.

This year's food trucks will tempt every taste. Dixie's Down Home Cooking is new to the food truck scene, but owners Bill and Kim Newsom have more than 27 years of food industry experience. Kim learned lots of special family recipes from her Aunt Helen, founder of Helen's Famous Sausage House in Smyrna.

Truck It from Georgetown will be serving up their renowned grilled cheese and meatball sandwiches. Ice cream made by several Delaware creameries will available at a new food truck from The Blue Scoop in Fenwick Island. Delicious homemade pasties will be offered by The Blue Hen Baker.

Festival attendees will be able to quench their thirst with Dogfish Head beer and local wines.

Tickets to the Baldcypress Bluegrass Festival also include the opportunity to ride a guided bus tour looping through the Great Cypress Swamp. DWL is actively restoring forests, wetlands and wildlife habitat in this unusual ecosystem. DWL's land managers will be on the bus to answer questions and explain about the history and ecology of the swamp.

Delaware Wild Lands is committed to long-term and large-scale habitat restoration in the swamp. Members have planted more than 200,000 trees here since 2011, improving one of the most important natural resources on the Delmarva Peninsula. Traditional uses continue on the land, including sustainable forestry, farming, and hunting. This forward-thinking management approach is reversing decades of degradation and rehydrating hundreds of acres of freshwater wetlands.

Wildlife and birds in great abundance are now thriving in the Great Cypress Swamp including wild turkey, red-headed woodpeckers, river otter, carpenter frogs, bald eagles, wood ducks, teal and several other species of waterfowl.

Tickets for adults are $35. Teens ages 13-17 are $10. Kids 12 and under enter free. This event is rain or shine. The stage and some seating are covered under a large bandshell tent. Guests are advised to bring a folding chair.

For more information, go to www.DeWildLands.org.