Foxfire Mountaineer Festival

From Foxfire Mountaineer Festival Website:

Saturday October 7, 2017 at the
Rabun County Civic Center 10 am - 5 pm

Music, Food, Contests, Crafts, Raffle, Auction, and just good plain old fun!
Music from 10:15 am - 5 pm

The Foxfire Mountaineer Festival is a single-day celebration of the rich heritage of the Southern Appalachian mountains, featuring traditional music from numerous regional performers, showcases and demonstrations of time-honored handicrafts and trades, and all manner of mountain-flavored games and challenges for young and old alike. The Festival also honors the people of Southern Appalachia, represented at the event by the kind folks who have shared their tales and their lives with Rabun County high school students since 1966 and allowed those stories to be shared with the world through the pages of Foxfire books and magazines.

Go ahead and plan on making a day of it -- lunch won't be a problem, with everything from burgers to barbecue to peanuts to funnel cakes on offer. There will be top-notch local and regional music on stage throughout the day, ranging from true traditional to current styles, but all mountain-grown, through and through. Keeping the old skills alive, the craftsfolk will be showing finished goods and/or demonstrating mastery of time-honored talents including woodworking, blacksmithing, folk pottery, textile crafts, and many others. The outdoor field events give more-adventurous visitors a chance to see how they would fare in the days of old in the mountains, with physical and mental challenges from the past: brute-strength and endurance contests like wood chopping and cross-cut sawing, skill and speed trials like archery and greased-pig chases, and simple schoolyard fun like three-legged races and sack races.