Calling all crafters and growers: fair season is here

Aug. 23—Looking to showcase your garden's bounty, your handiwork at quilting or jewelry making, or your best baked good recipes and canned goods?

The Haywood County Fair is right around the corner, and the community is invited to submit their homegrown products and handmade wares for display at the fair.

This year's fair runs from Sept. 28-Oct.1 at the Smoky Mountain Event Center. From photography and painting to giant pumpkins and artful flower arrangements, there are hundreds of entry categories to choose from.

Submitting entries to the Haywood County Fair is free for both kids and adults. It not only comes with a shot at blue ribbons and cash prizes, but creates a sense of camaraderie within the community, according to Sally Dixon, director of the Haywood County Cooperative Extension, which manages the fair submissions.

"This is just a great way to celebrate everything that's great about Haywood County," Dixon said. "It's just really fun to try something new or to show off a hobby that you have. It's great to have ways to showcase all of the art and handy-crafts, and the things that people are growing in the community."

Dixon said the tradition of entering the fair runs deep — citing some who've been entering pies in the baking contest for over 40 years. But newcomers are needed to help carry on the tradition.

Fair entries are also a way to honor and showcase traditional Appalachian life ways, from canning to basket making.

"There's a spirit of self-sufficiency in the area that those things lend to," Dixon said. "We are at really great risk of losing a lot of these heritage crafts and things that we've always done in the Appalachia area. We don't want to lose that. We don't want a whole generation of people to come up and not know how to quilt, or understand canning, or have an appreciation for how to grow a garden."

Nuts and bolts

Seasoned fair exhibitors will notice somewhat fewer categories.

"All the categories could be kind of overwhelming," Dixon said.

For example there used to be numerous categories for paining. Or there were separate categories for woodcarving, wood burning and wood turning.

"Now there might just be a more generic category like 'woodworking' that includes all of those things," Dixon said. "Anything that you could have entered in the fair, you can still enter. We kept the flavor while still keeping the competitiveness up."

This will be the second year the fair takes place in the autumn, which has shifted the type of horticultural and flower entries. Tomatoes and beans are on their way out, but apples and pumpkins are still in season, Dixon noted.

Freshly plucked perennials and arranged annuals can be still entered, but there isn't as much in bloom.

"We're just acknowledging that the flowers are gonna look different. Our flower show had a very different feel last year," Dixon said, noting that it is all dependent on when the first frost hits.

New to the fair this year is a high-stakes scarecrow contest, with $100, $75 and $50 cash prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. The ante has also been upped in the honey category, with the Haywood County Beekeepers Association sponsoring prizes of $100, $75 and $50.

One of the most popular fair entries are the sundry photography categories. And it's popularity is no surprise, Dixon said.

"We live in a community that lends itself to being very photogenic, it's not hard to get a good landscape shot of the mountains," Dixon said. "We have a lot of people here that live on farms and we just live in a very photogenic place."

New this year is a category for professional photographers, which were previously disallowed from the amateur category.

Fair entries are dropped off at the Smoky Mountain Event Center between 10 a.m.-6 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 26, and are then judged the following day. To peruse all the categories and find a good fit for your talents, go to haywood.ces.ncsu.edu and click the "2023 Haywood County Fair Information" tab on the left.

Booths for demos and crafters

The Haywood County Fair committee is extending an invitation to heritage artisans who wish to showcase their talents this year or host a demonstration session. Artisans are able to set up a booth to both display and demonstrate their craft. Those interested can contact Anessa Jaynes at 828-400-6232.