Apples, pumpkins and Prater’s Mill lead fall festivals

This weekend as many as 12,000 people are expected at the 45th Prater’s Mill Country Fair over Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 8-9. New fair Director Mikey Sims says he has booked out the fair and will have 165 exhibitors on the grounds in Tunnel Hill, Ga.

It’s hard to remember this regionally known event began as a little grass-roots efforts by Judy Alderman, Jane Harrell and a group of neighbors in the Meadow Park neighborhood of Dalton, Ga., as a way to raise funds to preserve the 19th-century mill.

“The fair started on Mother’s Day weekend in 1971,” says Alderman, who also founded the Prater’s Mill Foundation to support the mill’s historic preservation. Alderman’s been the face of the foundation and fair for 45 years but is retiring this year.

“We were just a band of people who were neighbors,” she says. “We would come out to the mill on the weekends and work. The fair was a way to raise funds for the mill. We thought, ‘Let’s see if people will pay to come.'”

Alderman recalls they had exhibitors at that first fair and they opened the mill for tours. “But part of the floor was out of the porch, and you had to climb on a rock to get in the mill,” she laughs.

She says their band of preservationists held a fair every month at the mill until December of that year. As the event grew, they cut the number of fairs to one in May and in October. That schedule continued until 2003 when it was decided to hold just one fair in the fall.

Visitors this weekend can tour the operational gristmill, the country store, Shugart cotton gin and the 1898 Prater’s Store. There will be clogging and bluegrass music, an area for bluegrass and country jam sessions near the old store, antique automobiles, hand-tufted bedspread display and lot of crafts.

“Everything we have at the fair has to be handmade of natural materials,” says Sims of the crafts sold. “The food is one of my favorite features because it’s all good. You have your choice of fried apple pies, breakfast, hot dogs, barbecue, snow cones, apple fritters, corn dogs, funnel cakes and more.”

* Another event that has grown over four decades is New Salem Mountain Festival on Lookout Mountain, which opens for its 42nd year Saturday and Sunday. A drive up to New Salem’s woodland setting is a great way to take in the beauty of fall’s changing leaves.

Organizer Faye Nichols says she has about 100 exhibitors, and here, too, everything must be handmade. From pottery and paintings to ironwork and woodworking, there is a broad variety of handmade crafts to be found. Visitors are advised to wear comfy shoes because the festival is all outdoors, rain or shine, except for a display of selected work that is shown in The Mountain Gallery.

Visitors can chow down on a variety of concessions or get a home-cooked meal from members of New Salem United Methodist Church.

“Everything is done by volunteers, so all our proceeds go back into the community,” says Nichols.

The sponsoring organization, New Salem Community Improvement Club, makes donations to the New Salem Community Center and New Salem Fire and Rescue Department.

* For a charming festival that looks like the setting of a Hallmark television movie, take a short trip up I-75 into downtown Athens, Tenn., for Saturday’s Pumpkintown. Exhibitors and organizers decorate the courthouse square with hay bales, mums, corn stalks tied to lampposts with orange and black bows, and pumpkins that have been carved by folks entering The Great-est Pumpkin Hunt.

The day’s fun kicks off at 7:30 a.m.with a pancake breakfast at the Habitat Home Store. There’s a Mutt Strut at 10:30 a.m. followed by a Doggie Costume Contest at 10:45. From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., visitors can play Pumpkin Plinko, enjoy musical acts on two stages, tie-dye their own T-shirt, enjoy music and dancing at the Scott Crisp Memorial Pow Wow, or visit any of the 11 businesses participating in an ArtsCrawl with exhibitions and demonstrations.

Organizer Meredith Willson says there will be more than 100 craft and food booths along with the McMinn County Living Heritage Museum’s quilt show, McMinn Regional Humane Society’s adopt-a-thon and children’s activities.

Contact Susan Pierce at spierce@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6284.