We had a wonderful time at the 38th annual Fall Festival, and we hope you did, too! Thanks to everyone who came out last weekend to enjoy perfect fall weather, highest quality craft, food, music & dance performances, and craft demonstrations. We are happy to report a record breaking attendance; over 14,000 folks showed up over the weekend! Special thanks go out to all our volunteers who helped make Fall Festival run smoothly.

Enjoy more photos from Fall Festival on Flickr.

Folks of all ages enjoyed musicians on the Fetival Barn stage at Fall Festival.

Congratulations to Bretta Ogburn and John Reece, who each won a pair of two tickets to Fall Festival!

Bretta and John, your tickets will be waiting for you at the Craft Shop entrance gate. They are good for one day (either Saturday or Sunday) from 10 AM- 5 PM.

Thanks to everyone for your fabulous responses to what you’re most looking forward to at Fall Festival! We’re glad this is such a special occasion for so many of you.

See you at Fall Festival!!

Happy first day of fall! We want to remind you that our 38th annual Folk School Fall Festival  is next weekend, October 1 & 2! And you have a chance to win free tickets! All you have to do to enter is have a look at our Fall Festival program and tell us what you’re most looking forward to seeing or doing at the festival. Just respond to this post by clicking “comments” at the end and you’ll be entered. We’ll randomly select two winners (who each get two tickets) and we’ll announce the winners through the blog on Monday. Your tickets will be reserved at the Craft Shop entrance gate.  Good luck and we’ll see you at Fall Festival!

 Thirty-eight years ago, the very first Folk School Fall Festival was held by Open House beside the large fields. Gus and Maggie Masters, then directors of the Folk School, were enamellists who were used to selling their art at shows and festivals. So they simply brought to the Folk School and local artists a festival of our own!

Fabric, of course, was part of the act from the beginning, as a way to announce and decorate for the festivities. I got involved with this the year that Jan and Nanette moved back to Brasstown when Jan became the new director of the Folk School. In the fall of that year, 1992, I happened to be teaching a class in fabric design in lower Keith House, when Jan stopped by my class and asked if I would make a banner. He had just found out that it was part of the tradition of Fall Festival. So I’m guessing that I was one of the next people to find out! He even had a simple design plan that involved leaf cutouts on a blue background. So with his son, John Neil’s help, I got it lettered and finished during class.

Years of Fall Festival banners decorate the Festival Barn.

Since then I have created these Fall Festival banners with many different quilters at the Folk School, always incorporating some of the current history of this time and place into the images and patterns. Part of the very beginning traditions of this place has always been to use new technology along with the old, time honored and tested techniques. We use photo print, hand dyed and the latest fabrics from city stores. So you will see traditional piecing and appliqué along with my batiks, which are colored with polymer pigments. Prints from the leaves outside the Fiber Arts Studio, pictures of people, crafts, scenes, and even the shy garden bunny become part of the record of our times here together, year after year.
All banners are hung from the rafters of Festival Barn, with the newest taking its place in front of the barn entrance as an unveiling. It’s there for the kickoff concert on Friday every year. This year’s inspiration is from the sunflowers, which have held their faces to the sky for many summers in the Folk School garden. It’s a symbol that feeds men and birds and speaks to our souls about brighter days ahead.

It’s here… the schedule of music and dance performers for Fall Festival. We’re looking forward to hearing and seeing old favorites, as well as some new talents!

Rowdy Morris Dancers March into the Festival Barn

Saturday, October 1, 2011

FESTIVAL BARN STAGE

MC’s: David Liden, Martin Sachs, Bob Grove
Sound: Dave Peters, Zach Kilmer
10:00 Betty Smith
10:40 Roberta and Furman, The Marble Mountaineers
11:20 Campbell Folk School Cloggers
12:00 Blue Ridge Grass
12:40 Kellee
1:20 Steel String Session
2:00 Buzzard Mountain Boys
2:40 Morris, Garland and Rapper Sword Dancers
3:20 Women of Heart
4:00 Lois Hornbostel & Ehukai Teves

CRAFT SHOP STAGE

MC’s: Nelson Thomas, Anne Merkel, Chris Moser
Sound: Chuck Fuechsel, Jerry Bernstein
10:00 Here and There Mountain Travelers
10:40 The Songtellers
11:20 Staber and Chasnoff
12:00 Nelson Thomas
12:40 Burningtown Grass
1:20 Barney’s Goat
2:00 Butternut Creek and Friends
2:40 Pure Profit
3:20 Bean Sidhe
4:00 Ralph and Harold

Sunday, October 2, 2011

FESTIVAL BARN STAGE

MC’s: Larry Sorgen, Martin Sachs, Bob Grove
Sound: Rob Tiger, Dave Peters
10:00 Sunday Morning String Band
10:40 Pure Profit
11:20 The Bear Notes
12:00 Campbell Folk School Cloggers
12:40 Beulah Land Gospel Band
1:20 The Blind Pig Gang
2:00 Cornbread Ted and The Butterbeans
2:40 Little Brasstown Baptist Church Choir
3:20 Morris, Garland and Rapper Sword Dancers
4:00 Irons In The Fire

CRAFT SHOP STAGE

MC’s: David Liden, Lee Knight, Tim Ryan
Sound: Don Cordier, Robert Zieber
10:00 Kenneth Gay
10:40 Lee Knight
11:20 Nelson Thomas
12:00 Chompin at The Bit String Band
12:40 Jamie Laval & Emolyn Liden
1:20 Mountain Valley Bluegrass
2:00 Suzuki Fiddlers
2:40 Whimzik
3:20 Staber & Chasnoff
4:00 Anne & Rob Lough

38th Annual Folk School Fall Festival

October 1 & 2, 10 AM- 5 PM daily

Admission: Adults- $5, Kids 12-17- $3, Under 12- free

Attend Folk School Fall Festival, October 1 & 2

The smell of kettle corn on a cool, crisp morning, the taste of the Folk School’s famous barbeque, wandering through the booths of over 200 talented craftspeople, and enjoying energetic music and dance performances…come experience it for yourself at the Folk School’s 38th annual Fall Festival!

Fall Festival is October 1 & 2 from 10 AM- 5 PM each day. All across our campus there will be fine craft and art for sale, such as quilting, woodwork, furniture, ironwork, pottery, glass, basketry, photography, painting, and much more. Demonstrators will also be sprinkled throughout our campus, giving you an opportunity to see exactly how traditional crafts are made.

A special first time event this year will be a Quilt Show which will be located in the Quilting Studio. This will feature the work of Folk School quilting instructors and students. Quilters will be on hand to demonstrate and answer questions.

Musicians and dancers will be performing all day on two stages. The music lineup includes some of the best of regional bluegrass, old time, Gospel, Celtic, and folk traditions. Talented performers include Steel String Session, Jamie Laval, Cornbread Ted and the Butterbeans, and The Bear Notes. Dancers will perform Appalachian clogging, and traditional English dances of Morris, Garland, and Rapper Sword.

Folk School Fall Festival is a great event for the kids. We have plenty to keep them occupied, like pony rides, alpaca viewing and petting, face painting, a drum circle, and the animal shelter’s adoption booth.

Please leave your furry friends at home. The only animals permitted at the festival are those you may adopt from the Valley River Humane Society booth. For more information, please visit our website at www.folkschool.org or call 828-837-2775.

It’s not too early to start thinking about Fall Festival 2011, especially if you are a craftsperson planning to have a booth at the Festival. Applications for craft vendors are now available for download on our website. (Applications for food vendors will be available the end of March.)

The deadline for craft vendor registration is May 13.

David Baker, the Fall Fairy, wants to remind you that Fall Festival is October 1-2!

Blacksmithing items for sale

Fall Festival was bustling this year with over 13,000 attendees.

37th Annual Fall Festival

John Campbell set up a timber framing demonstration and Resident Blacksmith Paul Garrett fired up his forge.

Demonstrations at Studio Row

There was music and dancing of all kinds.

Dance! (Photo taken by Kristen Egerdahl)

From the Festival Barn to the Craft Shop stage it was a challenge not to miss something!

Trying on a new fall hat

And there were the pick-up bands for those who could find a chair and an empty space to play tunes.

Weaving a lattice top for a raspberry pie

It’s officially fall in the mountains and we are still overcome with fruit. Apples have made their appearance, along with pears, and raspberries are here a second time to seduce us with their sweet red juiciness. The temperature is dropping which means we might stand the heat of the oven. We better make some pie.

A good pie crust is flaky and buttery and not always easy to get right the first time. It takes some cold ingredients and a little experience. We have some great pie makers in our extended Folk School family. Barbara Swell wrote a book about “The Lost Art of Pie Making” and she helped me get it just right. She can make an awesome crust with no lard or crisco, just butter. We have another great pie maker coming in to town for our Holiday Week in the Mountains in early December. Chris Carroll makes wonderful pies. Sometimes she even fills them with chocolate. Her Holiday Baking class will send each student off with home canned pie filling made from local seasonal fruit preserved in class. And there will be plenty of time to make pies before they leave, too.

We have a pie making project in process this week. The Brasstown Morris Dance teams will be performing English style seasonal display dances with garlands, sticks, bells, hankies and wooden clogs on the Festival Barn stage this Saturday and Sunday. They are fund raising for a trip to England next summer to learn new dances and meet other teams. Their booth serving British style food will feature handmade meat pies filled with ale braised local Brasstown Beef. There will also be cheese and veggie pasties along with a bunch of other treats like scones, shortbread and apple brown betty made from our own apples. Brasstown is a community that loves to cook and eat good food and wants to share it with others. But there is a limited number of pies, so get them quick. Morris dancers turn out to be doctors, nurses, builders, teachers, artisans and designers by the light of day which doesn’t leave much time for pie baking.

If the warmth of the kitchen and the glorious bounty of local fruit calls out to you this season, we are here to help. Say “aye” to a pie.

Rural Felicity Garland Dancers at Fall Festival

Sticks in the Mud Morris Dancers

Dame's Rocket Northwest Clog Morris team

]]> http://blog.folkschool.org/2010/09/27/say-aye-to-a-pie/feed/ 1 http://blog.folkschool.org/2010/09/23/37-years-of-fall-festival-fun/ http://blog.folkschool.org/2010/09/23/37-years-of-fall-festival-fun/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:17:16 +0000 Anna Shearouse, Marketing Assistant http://blog.folkschool.org/?p=2804

Roasting a pig at the first Fall Festival

Twice a year, hoards of people descend on sleepy little Brasstown.  On New Year’s Eve, the attraction is the Possum Drop at Clay’s Corner.  In early October, it’s the Folk School’s Fall Festival.  This annual celebration of local craftspeople, musicians, and dancers draws roughly 14,000 people, and we hope you’ll be one of them this year!

Fall Festival, always held the first weekend in October, celebrates Appalachian heritage through the sale of fine craft (over 200 vendors), music and dance performances, delicious food, craft making demonstrations, and plenty of activities for kids, like alpaca petting and a drum circle.  The Festival stretches from one end of the campus to the other, so bring your walking shoes.   Artisans, many of whom are members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, sell their wares in the Festival Barn, around the Fiber Arts building, and “studio row.”  Other craftspeople and vendors can be found along the walking paths and in “Olive’s Gallery” which is located at Open House.  For more information and a schedule of performance events, click here.

Fall Festival was started in 1974, by the Folk School directors at the time, Gus and Maggie Masters.  Maggie passed away in July, and we dedicate this year’s Festival to her memory.  The Festival was originally held in and around Open House.  While Fall Festival has grown enormously over the years, the spirit of autumnal excitement has remained the same.  Come see for yourself why Fall Festival continues to be one of the most popular events in the region!

October 2 & 3, 2010

10 am- 5 pm

Admission: Adults: $5, Ages 12-17: $3, Under 12: free