By: Charles Romans
Carter County Times
The popular annual craft and vendor festival, ‘It’s Fall Y’all,’ returns to downtown Olive Hill this Saturday (October 4), bringing with it a weekend full of fun and fellowship. The event showcases not only what Olive Hill and the entire region has to offer but also highlights how we like to have fun. There will be live music, crafts, and interactive entertainment to be enjoyed by all. The event will be held at the Depot in Olive Hill and promises a huge turnout, like in years past.
Event organizer Lisa Conley said she expects several thousand people to show up and have a wonderful time. The event begins at 10 a.m. and runs through 3 p.m. on Saturday with around seventy vendors, inflatables, and live music provided by local musicians. Conley said people can enjoy popular games like the Toilet Paper Toss, Flip Cup Tic Tac Toe, and Blindfolded Pumpkin Painting, not to mention the popular ‘Family Calling Contest’ where contestants showcase both their creativity and lung capacity to holler for family members across (metaphoric) long distances.
Conley, who serves on the board of Olive Hill Trail Town and is the Director of the Olive Hill Welcome Center and the Tom T. Hall Museum, said this will be the ninth year the popular event will be held.
“We used to hear complaints that there was nothing to do in Olive Hill in the fall,” Conley said about the origins of the event. “So, a group of us sat down and at first we tried to do it as a Harvest Festival.”
But the timing of availability to do the event was pushed into October, so she said doing it as a harvest festival didn’t work out.
“So, we decided that we would allow people to come in and set up to do fundraisers,” Conley continued.
The fundraising aspect, she said, was the reason Fall Y’all does not have food trucks. It gives local churches, nonprofits, and athletic organizations a chance to sell food as part of their fundraising efforts each year, she said.
“And let me tell you, they all set out really good food,” Conley said.
Trail Town does all cast iron cooking, for instance, Conley said.
“They have soup beans, cornbread, and cobbler, all fixed on an open fire. It’s really good.”
“When we started, there might have been forty vendors,” Conley remembered. “And we started out with games like bed races and plank board races. And every year we try to keep what’s good, what people enjoy, and add other fun stuff.”
The event has had its challenges over the years, such as when the city street where they held the bed races was closed (and became part of the highway). But they have continued to work to improve the event over the years and make necessary adjustments to what they offered the community and visitors. And it has more than doubled in size over time, now providing space for over eighty vendors this year.
“And there is a huge variety,” Conley said. “I have never seen the wide variety of vendors that we are going to have this year.”
Conley said when she is talking to potential vendors, she tells them that the type of items they choose to sell is entirely up to them. This allows people to be able to find virtually anything they might be looking for and the potential variety also improves each vendor’s ability to market their items and fundraise for their individual organizations.
“People are interested in everything,” Conley said. “We have gone from five or six hundred people attending the event to four to five thousand that come out for Fall Y’all.”
The ability for vendors to fundraise for their organizations is a great bonus to the local community, Conley said. And the event itself will use this year’s proceeds from the rental of vendor space for the Caboose Restoration Project, so everyone benefits from the event. Conley said she encourages everyone to come out this year and have a good time whether they want to compete in games, make personal or gift purchases, or enjoy live music with friends they might not get to see otherwise.
“There is something for everyone,” Conley said. “And with so many things available, you might find some really great things you didn’t even know you were looking for.”
Contact the writer at charles@cartercountytimes.com
