Recap: A Kentucky Handmade Weekend Autumn 2020
Ben Ashby
We’ve started a new tradition at my farmhouse in Kentucky called A Kentucky Handmade Weekend. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to do something with the farm/on the farm that promoted handmade, rural made, our small town, and a slower way of life. Earlier this year we had the idea to host a pop-up shop and a few workshops at the farmhouse. It felt like a nice way to celebrate our community during a very rough year. We had our first event in August. At the time that event felt like a huge success….then we had our October event and we were blown away with the support.
The concept behind these events is pretty simple…we wanted to have a weekend that celebrated handmade, American made, and local art and folk art. We wanted it to be part pop-up shop and part workshops. We created a large store area in my backyard that was filled with goods and art by locals, vintage pieces I had collected over the years, and a ton of American made goods by my maker friends from all across the US.
The workshops were to be in the side yard, but they grew bigger and bigger and just kinda ended up being wherever we had enough space. The front yard was dedicated to food and pumpkins. Over three days we welcomed so many friends and neighbors to the house. We even hosted a bake off!
For Spring 2021 we will be filling the orchard out back with vendors, adding more food out front, and bringing in a whole new group of workshops. It has been our dream to bring our love of art and handmade to our very rural western Kentucky county and we feel like we are well on our way!
We are doing a much smaller Christmas Open House in December if you are near by.
The following are a few of the images I took over the weekend. I ended up being way too busy to properly photograph it all. I think in the spring we will need a photographer.
You can find many of these items in our online shop!
