Big Sky Country Havest Festival sets up shop in Hot Springs

Matt Unrau

Three years ago Carol Sharp and her husband Jim stumbled upon a meeting of a core group of Hot Springs residents that had a problem. They were trying to organize a barter fair, but had lost their original place to hold it.

That’s where the Sharps came in giving them a place to hold the fair on their property in exchange for advice on how to build their house in a cost-saving energy efficient way.

That was the beginning of the Big Sky Country Festival that now consists of dozens of vendors selling goods and trading ideas that span from sustainable living to new age thinking.

The crowd that the fair attracts is what initially astonished Sharps friends when they learned that she going to allow “those hippies” on her property. “We’re red-neck farmers. We’re not hippies,” jokes Sharp. “But, this has been fun.”

Sharp herself sets up a booth, sitting alongside other booths that house a variety of different things including all things ty-dye, massage therapists, classes on how to get better gas mileage in your car and mountain men tents, one of which was run by Sharp’s husband.

Beside teaching passersby about mountain man life Jim is responsible for one of the favorite activities at the three day fair, the candy cannon. Loading massive amounts of candy into his cannon Jim will shoot the sweets into the air letting them rain on sweet-hungry children in the middle of the fair.

It all adds up to what Janelle Clarke, one of the organizers, calls a “slice of americana, everything from big truck tires to hand made buck skin hides.”

Clarke goes on to explain that the fair was originally modeled after the Okanogan barter fair that started 36 years ago in Spokane.

That fair, like this one, brought people together with the main purpose being to barter, wether it’s a farmer from Pablo or a geothermal expert from Missoula.

“This fair is so nice,” says Tye Dye Everything owner Arlene Falcon. “It’s like being on vacation.”