Traveling and immersing ourselves in new experiences does not have to break the bank.  You see there is a hidden gem in everyone’s area and budget.  I know what everyone is thinking, “Tonya you live in the armpit of Indiana.  What could possibly be near you that is cheap, fun, and accessible to all?”  Well friends, I am going to break out the “F” word.  FESTIVAL!  It is fall y’all and there are festivals all around you no matter where you are located. 

There is a festival for everything you can possibly think of, blueberry, watermelon, corn, sunflowers, you name it and it probably exists.  Festival entrance fees are usually fairly cheap and if you plan ahead you can save money by bringing a cooler of drinks and snacks for a picnic.  Those food trucks can get you every time if you let them.  This week we are trying something new, so ready your chainsaws and dust off those flannels, we are going to the Hoosier Harwood Festival.

The Hoosier Hardwood Festival is a three day event at the Boone County fairgrounds.  There is free parking(yay) and the entry fee is only 10 bucks.  You can also save $2 dollars a ticket if you buy them online.

We only attended one day and let me tell you, there was a lot to see if you are into logging, lumberjacks, and flannel. As usual, don’t come for me internet, I know I will butcher some of these terms, descriptions, and possibly the whole thing. After all, I am not a logger, lumberjack, or equestrian.  I do, though, love a flannel shirt.  

We started our adventure in the Marketplace Tent, well because I love things that are handcrafted and I also love to spend money apparently.  Booth 1 and I am ready to give the guy $2800 bucks.  He is selling a wood engraver and I have never wanted anything more after seeing what it can do.  In my mind I am going to have a top seller Etsy shop and dominate the market of engraved wood art projects.  Korey pulled me away from temptation and only had to buy a handmade necklace to make me happy, because again, I am a 5 year old.  The marketplace did however have booths from food, wood crafts and tools, to education and log buying companies. There really was something for everyone.

Our next stop was the noisiest and my favorite.  Artists!  If you have never had the pleasure of watching a wood carving artist shape a giant log into a work of art with a chainsaw and blowtorch you are missing out.  The talent packed into that pasture was outstanding. There is a competition going on also while you are perusing the statues.  There were tiny eagles all the way up to 10 foot grizzly bears.  There was also my personal favorite, a life size firefighter in complete gear and the guitarist from ZZ top.  The precision these artists have and the fact that they have not sawed any of their appendages off(maybe) is so impressive.  You do have an opportunity to buy any of these, and they range from small items around 50 bucks to large items going into the thousands.

We next found the silent auction tent.  Here is a display of wood carvings that the artists outside created within an hour time frame.  They were then donated to the FFA for auction.  There would also be a live auction for other creations but that was Sunday so we were going to miss it.  After walking through the tent, we found one that caught our eye and put in a bet of $260 bucks.  It was about 4 foot tall and was a carving of a bear with an owl on its shoulder.  The bear was also holding a removable sign that said Forrest Friends.  We placed our bet and walked away knowing we would be outbid.

The next thing that we found, I had no idea there was a market for, let alone it would be entertaining.  The Indiana Best Logger Competition!  Are you hearing banjos yet?  Basically there are several competitors on the field that go through a series of challenges and will accumulate points until a grand champion with the most points accrued is announced at the end.  They did speed cutting, cutting branches quickly and safely so they would not snap back at you and of course what was my favorite, Timber!  That is not really the name, I missed it, so I have renamed the sport.  In Timber, you have a tree trunk with no branches that towers in the air with a target mounted on top.  The logger will place a spike or some sort of post on the ground marking where that target is going to fall.  The tree is then cut and points are awarded for if the target is impaled by the place marker.  Fun right! I never got to see anyone nail that target while I was there, there were some that were close, but close doesn’t count right?

The festival also has a kids area with blow ups, a petting zoo and other kid friendly activities.  There is also a beer garden, wine slushies, and food trucks galore!  It’s not a festival if you don’t get some deep fried desert of some sort.  We  tried deep fried cookie dough.  It was not my thing but it was fun to at least try it.

If you like big toys, well there is a lot for that as well.  There was machinery so that you could make your own live edge boards, tractors with giant claws, and many other equipment needed for logging.  I had no idea what any of this was so I opted to leave my husband in the dust and head for the horse show.

It wasn’t a real horse show first off, it was the Indiana Equine Foundation Charity horse show.  I made it over to watch what I thought was called the Horse Poll Trot, this could be inaccurate.  It sounds more exciting than it was with the exception of one incident.

Let me set the stage by saying there were only 5 people in the stands.  A mother with her three young kids and me.  It was just a rider taking her horse around and trotting over what looked to be landscaping timbers on the ground.  When the girl switched directions, that’s when all hell broke loose.  Needless to say her horse put on its brakes and she flew over top on the ground and let out a “F###!”

Her foul mouth did not stop there, and the small kids in front of her also did not deter her sailor dialect.  She then just kept saying “What the F###?” and then threw her hands in the air while announcing, “Well that’s it!  That’s why kids should not be allowed in the F###### stands!”  At first I did not think I heard her correctly.  Was she really blaming these kids for her failure?  Um yep, and she kept running her mouth all the way out of the arena.  Way to keep it classy, and way to have excellent showmanship.

I felt sorry for the mother.  Her kids weren’t even bad, I like to keep note of bad kids so me and my husband can laugh about it later.  These kids gave me no fodder.  When the next rider came out, she too threw her hands in the air asking if the stands were going to be calm.  There are five of us ladies, I don’t think they can really get any more calm unless we were dead.  All in all the mother declared she was leaving, showing grace I know I would have never been capable of.  I guess I was most shocked at the lack of consequences for these girls’ actions.  Not one person on the speaker or on the sidelines said anything to these ladies.  All I can say is wow and I would like to add, if I had a White Trash Award, you ladies would have tied for first.

After the horse arena drama, and after I picked my mouth off the ground, we ended our day by attending a lumberjack show.  I would call this a mini show of 10 events.  It kinda reminded me of what you would find at a dinner show in Branson or Gatlinburg.  There were two competitors, a red lumberjack and a blue lumberjack.  The audience was also divided to either cheer or jeer them as they competed.

I am amazed at the speed that they perform these tasks and the fact that there was no bloodshed.  I was disappointed in the springboard competition though.  During this the lumberjack chops a slit in the wood and puts a plank in to climb higher on the tree.  They continue until at the top.  Well the slits were already there and they did not go too far, but it was still impressive.

They ended the show by showing off their cat-like reflexes of running across logs in the water.  They both made splashdowns but in the end our red flannel lumberjack took home the glory.

All in all this was a neat experience.  We ended up leaving mid day due to the heat and feeling like the surface of the sun out there.  If we would have stayed there was live music that evening and we could have learned how to do the log roll,(bummer).   I learned a lot about logging and have a new friend, well two to be exact.  We won our silent auction and are now proud owners of the Furry Friends statue.  I have named them Daryl and Randy.  They are supposed to be outside, however, I love them and put them right in the living room where they belong.