Newtonia Fall Festival

Yesterday was my communities Fall Festival. And.... of course.... I was involved in it up to my eyeballs. When will I ever learn! It is so easy to sign up to do stuff and so much harder to come through with it all. I am in the quilt guild so that means helping with the quilt show. I have to admit that my roll in that wasn't so big this year. Paula did the lion's share of that project and deserves all credit for how fabulous it turned out. I am also on the board of the Newtonia Betterment Association, so I was in charge of getting food volunteers and general helping.
Luckily we are a small community so it wasn't so big but it was enough. Newtonia was hit very hard by the Tornadoes that came through this year. The Fall Festival was in question and we decided that the festival was just what we needed to show we were still here and that not even a tornado could stop us.
The community of Newtonia has been here since the early 1800's and was actually very important in the Civil War campaigns for both sides of the war in this area.
The festival involves and ham and bean feed (for which I cooked beans all night). The desert is getting to be quite famous for it's hand made pies. (Yes I baked two pies for that too.) (recipe to come shortly)
At the end of the festival, I finally got a chance to sneak inside and get a bite to eat. I checked out the pie table in hopes that something lovely was left. Oh My!
I found this bit of loveliness.

It did everything you need a piece of pie to do down to the toes curling. I did the happy dance right there and then went and bought the rest of the pie. It was fabulous.

The Newtonia Battlefields Protection Association has a tour of the Ritchey Mansion house and a show put on by local Civil War Reenactors. It is always fabulous. My kids love to go through the camp and see what they do.
Our quilt guild always has a display of what we have done all year and they have their raffle quilt there. They money they raise goes to fund guild projects which include quilts for project Linus and local community charity quilts. We have several way this year in Newtonia to the Tornado Survivors.
This is the quilt we raffled off this year. I was not the lucky winner. :o(

The guild hand quilted the quilt this year. The back of the quilt shows the detail work.

Then there are crafters that sell their wares all day. Thanks to Hurricane Ike, it rained most of the morning and we were really worried that we wouldn't have a festival. However by noon it had cleared off and was very nice.
Of course I had a booth there with my aprons, patterns, soaps, and my little girl's cookies. They have sold their cookies there for several years now and always do very well.

Miss Caroline is selling some of her famous cookies here. She and Sarah and Grandma's Snicker doodles, Crosby Cookies, and Aunt Jeanne's Oatmeal Raisin cookies. They were all very tasty!
The Ricochet Riders also come every year and put on a show for us and provide us with games. The have brought a little train every year. Jeddie got to the festival just in time to get in on the last ride.

Jeddie was very scared once he got in the train. I was worried that I might have to go pull him out but it would seem he got over his initial shyness.

This was his face at the end of the ride. (Caroline seemed to have to help him wave.)
Because he got in at at the end, the train just happened to be changing it's rout to go through the parade.

It is a very short parade but fun! He got to watch the big farm tractors go by. Little Boy Heaven!