33rd Cane Hill Harvest Festival Opens Saturday

The 33rd Cane Hill Harvest Festival, set for Sept. 21-22, will give visitors the opportunity to look back at how people lived in the past, with a few new twists thrown in that are part of the here and now.

The festival will have live music, a doubles horseshoe tournament, sorghum making and hominy making, a country breakfast, food trucks, tractor show, arts and crafts, a quilt show and a kids’ play zone.

Misty Vaughn, who is coordinating concessions and craft vendors this year, said concession vendors will include kettle corn, funnel cakes, nachos, hot dogs, lemonade, pork rinds, snow cones and barbecue.

Another 18 craft and exhibit vendors are registered for the festival, Vaughn said. These vendors will have items such as jewelry, hand crafted wood work, crochet items, card and board games, watercolor paintings, soaps, quilts, local produce and jams and jellies.

Admission to the festival is free. Parking is $3 and this goes to Lincoln’s FFA Chapter.

New features this year are a photography contest and a pottery exhibit featuring Northwest Arkansas master potters from the 19th century. Educational sessions will be held on tatting, the history of Cane Hill and looking to the future, history of quilting, spinning and Cane Hill’s role in the Civil War.

The photography challenge will feature pictures taken by visitors at the harvest festival and then uploaded to Instagram. Prizes will be given to contestants that receive the most likes on their photos. The contest has two divisions: ages up to 12 and ages 13 and older.

PG Telco is providing a hot spot for the photo contest.

A book signing table will be set up each day from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. for a new book, Cane Hill’s Past, Present and Future, written by Bobby Braly, executive director of Historic Cane Hill Inc., a nonprofit organization.

Historic buildings in Cane Hill will be open during the Festival and the public is invited to go into the Historic Cane Hill College, Historic Cane Hill Museum or stroll along the walking trail to learn more about the history of Cane Hill.

Cane Hill College reopened to the public in May 2017, following a 2 ½-year project to extensively restore and refurbish the two-story brick building. Cane Hill College was founded by Cumberland Presbyterians in 1834, and was the first collegiate institution of learning established in Arkansas.

The pottery exhibit, “Men of Earth, 19th Century Potters of Northwest Arkansas,” will be open to the public in The Museum Gallery at Historic Cane Hill, the former historic A.R. Carroll Drugstore.

Both days, the Festival opens with an all-you-caneat country breakfast from 7-10 a.m. for $8. Arts and crafts vendors will open at 9 a.m. both days.

Cane Hill Harvest Festival is held on the grounds of the historic Cane Hill College, 14219 College Road, (WC4762). The college is located just off Highway 45 in Cane Hill, in the beautiful Ozark Mountains, west of Fayetteville and east of Tahlequah, Okla.

FILE PHOTOS Emma Foster of Cane Hill is surrounded by beautiful, handmade quilts displayed in one of the rooms in Historic Cane Hill College during the 2018 harvest festival.

Gretchen Crane of Cane Hill makes lye soap at the 2018 Cane Hill Harvest Festival. It takes six hours to cook and then the soap should cure for about two weeks. Years ago, Crane said, pioneers used lye soap for everything: as medicine, as a soap and as shampoo. “It’s all they had,” she said.

Wanda Biggs of Cane Hill captures sorghum molasses during the 2018 Cane Hill Harvest Festival that will be poured into glass jars and sold to visitors.