Harvest Arts & Peace Festival

It was so cold in Prather. Both days, Saturday and Sunday, I shivered and shook and couldn't wait for the festival to be done and over with. That's a first. The first day I came home frozen and wind burned, with almost $300 extra dollars in my pocket. The second day was a little warmer, and I came home less cold and only a bit richer. I knew it would be a bad year, and it was. Down by about $75 from last year. No hugely dramatic run-in with the Goat Lady. It's funny, I can't remember anybody's names at these things, except the owners and a couple of the employees. We all of us, me and the rest of the vendors, call each other by what we do or bring to the festival. There's the Purple Hat Guy, the Turtle Man, Bob the Honey Dude, I'm the official Soap Lady, there are the Quilt Girls, the Gourd Woman and the Ciabatta Babes, Tabuleh Chicks . . . well, you get the idea. The Goat Lady did make her early Sunday morning tour of the show and condescendingly clucked over my soaps, saying, "Nice, nice. Hmm." I find it fascinating that she even bothers, or that I don't race over to her booth and cluck and hum and snicker at her goat milk and lavender scented turd cakes. This woman doesn't even know what a stick blender is, for chris'sakes. I'm being unkind. I apologize.