Sagada’s best to the featured in 9th Etag Festival

SAGADA, MOUNTAIN PROVINCE- The 9th Etag Festival will be an uplifting display of the town’s best products including coffee Arabica, woven goods, processed food, wines, pottery, recycled items, organic vegetables, heirloom rice, fruits and ‘etag’ at the municipality’s frontage dubbed Etag festival Emporium.

Mountain Province Congressman Maximo Dalog Jr. will be the town’s guest speaker during the twin celebration of the 9th Etag Festival and Feast of the presentation of our Lord Jesus Christ in the temple and Purification of the blessed Virgin Mary from January 30 to February 2, 2020.

The Municipal Council in 2011 enacted the town’s Etag Festival identifying ‘etag’ as a way of life of the people and fully promoting local products finds meaning in this year’s 9th Etag Festival.

‘Etag’ refers to that cultural salted and smoked pork with an aromatic smell best served with chicken meat in a delicacy called ‘pinikpikan’.

While ‘etag’ was then and still used for ritual purposes for the naming of a child or during agricultural feasts such as ‘begnas’, etag is now a food product sold in stores and cooked as part of meals sold in restaurants.

Etag delicacies such as etag spaghetti and etag burgers are looked forward to in the upcoming town festival in the cook fest challenge to be observed on the 2nd day of the event.

Another town product is the famous Sagada coffee (Arabica).

Coffee Arabica is grown by a number of coffee farmers belonging to Sagada Arabica Coffee Growers and Processors Organization (SACGPO). Coffee beans are processed into roasted coffee ready to be brewed into aromatic beverage.

Sagada is noted to have won top winning awards in two recent international coffee competitions in France in 2017 and in Italy in 2019.

Another noted product in Sagada are its woven items sold in town and nearby places of Bontoc and Baguio.

Pioneered by the 1970’s Sagada Weaving are intricately woven bags and more bags of different designs worked on by nearly a hundred weavers and the products sold by nearly 30 individual entrepreneur firms in the town’s souvenir shops.

Processed foods of jams and jellies as well are done by private entrepreneurs including Masferre’s and Gabay’s.

A civic parade to be participated by schools, organizations, private and public institutions shall be observed from sitio Daoangan to the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin (CSMV) for the ecumenical service followed by the opening program.

Ground demonstrations by elementary and high school students follow at the softball ground.

Search for the best recycled waste bins shall be done at the municipal plaza in observance of the town’s drive for a clean and green town.