BUTLER — Less than an hour after the Prairie Peddler Festival opened Saturday morning, hundreds of people had already arrived and began mingling with the 200 plus featured craft vendors.
More would later arrive, one of the longtime festival organizers Suzi Skoglund assured. She anticipates thousands of people to visit the 32nd annual event, which runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 28, Sept. 29, Oct. 5 and Oct. 6 at 3170 Ohio 97 just south of Butler.
“What I love is when people say, ‘I’ve been coming here for 25 years,’ when they tell me it’s a family tradition,” Skoglund said. “That makes it rewarding.”
Once, she recalls, a couple stopped by on their honeymoon. On another occasion, a young man proposed to his girlfriend at the event. Others return year after year. Children have grown up visiting the festival regularly, and many now come back with their own families.
Vendors like Lori Cline of Cabin Cellar Crafts are among those who consistently attend the festival. The resident of Toronto, Ohio called the Prairie Peddler her “favorite event” of the year.
This season marks Cline’s 18th year participating.
“This festival, it’s the one I like the best,” she said.
She sells an array of hand-painted wooden signs and animal figures like moose and bears.
“I live in a log cabin,” Cline said, explaining the theme of many of her pieces. “I started by making things for myself, and then people would say, ‘If you make me one, I’ll buy it.’”
Another returning vendor was Richard Kent of western Pennsylvania. The Prairie Peddler Festival is one stop of many across the eastern portion of the United States for the full-time, fourth-generation wood carver.
For likely his most unique craft, Kent carves Santa Claus ornaments from reindeer antlers.
“I fly into Anchorage (Alaska) the second weekend after Easter and drive an hour and a half east to a reindeer farm,” Kent said. “Every year, this antler falls off and comes on new, so (the farm owner) sells the sheds for a living.”
For the past 36 years, he’s carved the antlers and never once met anyone else who does the same thing. He estimates that he began experimenting with antler-carving 38 years ago. At that time, he first tried whitetail deer antlers. They were a little too soft, he said.
When a friend of his moved to Alaska, Kent requested something new for carving. The friend sent a reindeer antler.
Initially, Kent carved the entire set of antlers. But upon his wife’s request, he used the shavings to make Christmas gifts for her friends.
“As I carve on the antler, it can change colors, so nature gives you one of a kind items with the shapes and the colors. None of them are identical,” Kent said.
He also carves feathers out of elk antlers.
The Prairie Peddler festival continues Sunday, Sept. 29, Saturday, Oct. 5 and Sunday, Oct. 6. Admission costs $8 per adult, $3 per child (age 6 to 12) and is free for children under age 6.
For more information, visit prairietown.com.
