World Grits Festival (update: Teenager wins grits rolling competition)

Image by World Grits FestivalImage by 20090417-grits.jpg Grits rolling: It's one of the more curious aspects of the festival.

Update 2: Paul Zoeller was there and has a great photo gallery to share.

Update April 20: 18-year-old Chaz Easterling won the 2009 grits rolling competition, and ABC News 4 has a fun video of the grit-rolling action.

First reporting: 

Running from Friday, April 17, through Sunday, the World Grits Festival brings a whole lot of milled-corn loving fun to St. George.

The festival was founded 24 years ago in honor of the towns large demand for grits, and has been held yearly since.

The festival starts today (Friday) at 9 a.m. with your usual gamut of vendors, demonstrations, and music. But it really gets going on Saturday with the addition of a 5k, grits dunking booth, corn shelling contest, grits eating contest, and, the pinnacle event: the grits rolling contest at 1 p.m.

In the rolling contest (video above) contestants are weighed and then challenged to roll around in a pool of grits and emerge having out on the most weight.

On Sunday the festival continues but concludes earlier at 5 p.m.

Here are directions to the festival in downtown St. George (about 50 miles from downtown Charleston.)

To learn more about the festival, go check out their Web site and the whole schedule. -- The Post and Courier's write-up and imagery from last year are also quite worthy.

Oh, and it's worth pointing out that there's a smaller grits festival out near Folly this Sunday, the Lowcountry Grits Festival.