Harvest Fest 2008

Volunteers and vendors met on Garcon Gulch Road outside of Hot Springs Friday and Saturday for the second annual Big Sky Country Harvest Fest. The purpose: promote local foods and goods.

“It is based off a barter fair in Washington where they try to do a grassroots marketing of local produce and crafts,” organizer Lauria Feiler said. Feiler, a Hot Springs resident, said the fair is run completely on a volunteer basis.

“This whole thing is put on through a volunteer effort,” she said. “We have a volunteer kitchen that is completely wood-burning for the volunteers to get food.” She said that one meal to thank the volunteers would include turkey with all the fixings.

She said that the kitchen is based on the Rainbow Gathering kitchens that were set up in and around New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s a great way for folks to get together and barter and buy crafts,” she said. “Some people go to events like to this to get all of their items for the winter.”

Although Friday was more of a set-up day than a day of actual festivities, Feiler said that she felt they had gotten a much larger response than they had last year.

“If the weather stays nice then we’re hoping to expect maybe close to 1,000 people coming through throughout the weekend,” she said.

Most of the vendors camped out behind their booths, whether in tents, campers, or even a tee-pee.

“It is just a real nice time,” Feiler said. “On Saturday we’ll have a drum circle, we don’t want any canned music here, we want it all to be natural.”

She said that it is really great to show people that they can do things without having to be on the “grid.”

“Our kitchen is all natural and all wood burning and we don’t have electricity out here, so it shows people that they don’t always need their creature comforts to survive,” she said.

On Saturday and Sunday various education workshops took place in the education tent located at the festival site. Linny Gibson of Hot Springs is a member of the Hot Springs Artist Society. She helped to organize the event and put special focus on the educational lectures that took place throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday.

Gibson was there to help teach, but was also selling pottery.

“It is a lot of fun and a great way to spend time with some really wonderful people,” she said.

Gibson was particularly excited about the workshops which included everything from recycling to healthy eating and being able to watch your body for signs something might be wrong. She said there were a lot of open slots during both days and she was hoping that people vending or visiting would sign up.

“It would be great if some of the vendors would sign up to do workshops on their various talents,” she said. “It is great that this event can be used to get people to learn things.”

Harvest Fest went until Sunday night and both Gibson and Feiler hope that it is able to expand and grow over the coming years.

“We’d really just like this to become a big family community event,” Feiler said.