It was an iconic time at an iconic place and hundreds of thousands of people had to eat! Here’s a fascinating article by RealFoodTraveler.com writer and editor, Irvina Lew, about the logistics of what it was like feeding the folks at Woodstock in 1969. 

Food loving readers who remember — or remember hearing about —The 1969 Woodstock Festival, might be as fascinated as I was by the story of how tens of thousands — among more than 400,000 concertgoers — got fed. Lisa Law, who captured the original event in photographs and on film (while she was the seven-month pregnant mother of a two-year-old), told the story of her personal involvement in the effort during a golf cart tour on the original grounds of the historic happening.

Called Behind the Scenes at the Hog Farm with Lisa Law, the golf cart tour was just one of the events that celebrated the 54th anniversary of the August 15 to 18, 1969 concert, which took place on the grounds at Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. As Museum Director and Senior Curator, Dr. Neal V. Hitch, drove through the fields and described some history, Law supplemented the background and shared her vivid first-hand recollections. She also showed us aerial photographs of the occasion which brought to life what we were viewing.

Here’s some of the story of feeding Woodstock in 1969

Lisa Law was born in 1943 and became a photographer, author, filmmaker, documentarian, museum curator, builder, architect, mother of four and grandmother of five. By 1969, she was already an established photographer who had shot The Beatles and early images of Bob Dylan — with whom she had lived in a communal house in Los Angeles dubbed “The Castle,” in 1966.

She arrived in Woodstock from New Mexico with the Hog Farm commune, founded by Hugh Romney, Jr. (aka Wavy Gravy). They were all invited because Stan Goldstein, Coordinator of Campgrounds for Woodstock, had attended the Hog Farm Summer Solstice in June of 1969 and was very impressed by how sensitively members handled folks tripping on acid, which he knew would be useful for the event he was helping to plan. “We’re gonna come and get you and bring you all up to Woodstock,” he told Wavy Gravy, who agreed to help with the logistics. At a press conference, the leader later learned that the New Mexico group was there to provide “security.” Which, in fact, had some truth to it; their non-intrusive tactics at keeping order were so successful, they were dubbed the “Please Force,” because they said: “Please don’t do that, please do this instead.”

As Law recalls: “I packed a tipi” and two-weeks before the event, 85 members of the Hog Farm commune boarded a jumbo jet headed to New York, where “We were bused” to Max Yasgur’s now-world-famous dairy farm, in Bethel. Once there, they set up the first tipi, a medical tent, a trip tent, a Stage — which became a 24-hour Free stage with a lot of musical acts — and a kitchen. At first, they expected to only feed the Hog Farmers and their friends, just a couple of hundred people.

With money in hand and along with a Hog Farm member, Peter Whiterabbit, they drove a truck into Manhattan to buy supplies at commercial restaurant stores, in Chinatown, including Greenblatts. They purchased 1500 pounds of rolled oats, 1500 pounds of bulgur wheat, and enormous quantities of dried apricots, almonds, currents, wheat germ, Tamari, and honey. They also bought supplies: pots and pans (“never enough pots,” Law noted), onion cutters, cleavers, and trash pails (in which to mix food) and 160 thousand paper plates, the same number of Dixie cups, forks, and spoons plus 250 metal cups, for fellow commune members to wear on their belts (so they’d always have a cup available). En route back to Sullivan County, they picked up hitchhikers; later, they drove a large flatbed to neighboring farms, where they bought rows and rows of vegetables.

The roads were teeming with hitchhikers headed to the festival, and many were fed by local people along the route. Dr. Hitch told of a local organization that prepared 5000 peanut butter sandwiches, in a junior high school. An online report that I read noted: “Members of a local Jewish group heard about food shortages and made and delivered hundreds of sandwiches to the kids en route. They went through 200 loaves of bread, 40 pounds of meat, and two gallons of pickles.” And, even though it was not a national catastrophe, the National Guard supplied food, including cartons of Melba toast, Coca Cola, Hershey bars and a few other items. Yasgur provided water trucks and yogurt and milk from his cows. Local resort hotels donated boxes of foods, straight from their kitchen larders.

On Saturday, during the Quill set, Lisa Law went on the Main Stage and said: “There’s plenty of food at the Hog Farm.” And attendees started trickling over to that adjacent field where some liked the vibe — and the music — so much that they stayed. According to Law, some of the Hog Farmers and campers were so content in their own venue, that they never went to hear the music on the main stage.

Another scene from Sunday morning is well remembered. Wavy Gravy famously announced from the stage “What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000!” At that point, the Hog Farmers served muesli in Dixie Cups to the fans from a parked flatbed truck on the side of the stage.

According to Ms. Law, the Hog Farm commune established a Free Kitchen and five food booths. She estimated between 15,000 to 20,000 Dixie cup servings of muesli, for each breakfast, and vegetables with bulgur wheat, for each lunch and dinner. Volunteers came forward on their own to work; then a second generation appeared and a third; a fourth generation of volunteers emerged to feed concertgoers standing in ten long lines. Ms. Law added emphatically: “Nobody was in charge, it happened organically. Someone comes and sees how to do a job and works until a replacement arrives, even Hog Farmers were replaced by volunteers.” (Likewise, caring Hog Farm volunteers tended to folks in the medical tent and in the “trip” tent.)

Our 90-minute golf cart tour flew by. Afterwards, I went to see the display of Lisa Law’s original photographs at the Museum of Bethel Woods, one of a series of venues on the sprawling 800-acre campus, which includes the Bel Woods Pavilion, a 16,000-seat amphitheater. Her photographs greet guests at the entry and are part of an exhibition called “The Place Where Peace Happened: How Communes and Collectives Set the Precedent for Peace and Love at Woodstock.”

My favorites were Lisa Law’s food photographs because they bring to life the Free Kitchen, showing volunteers using cleavers to chop vegetables. (The original cleavers that Law purchased in Manhattan are on view.) Another illustrates concertgoers waiting patiently on long lines, for food or water. There are images depicting the Baby Race and the Information booths. One photo by Henry Diltz shows the free stage, where Joan Baez performed the day after she appeared on the Main Stage. It’s the size of one entire wall. And one dynamic image of Law’s ex-husband is on view and also for sale in the gift shop at the museum: Tom Law putting up the first tipi at Woodstock, Yasgur’s cow looking on.

I must admit that I had no interest in Woodstock, in 1969, though I was and still am a fan of some of the musicians. It intrigues me that my late son-in-law served food, there, and, that one of my daughters attended the 1999 anniversary event. (Two factoids that I learned, recently, when we were in Bethel, together.)

What does entice me — beyond how they all got fed — is the fabulous eighty-year-old who played such a central role in the historic event and whose artistic career is still flourishing. Brava Lisa Law.

-Story and photos, where noted, by Irvina Lew, RealFoodTraveler.com Europe Editor