History and a Fall Festival

My shop is on Jefferson Avenue (in Moundsville, WV). Jefferson is the main business district in our small town of around 10,000 people. It's also a street full of history, starting in 250 BC. Give or take a year.

What is this, you ask? It's a burial mound. Yes, you heard me right. It's the Grave Creek Burial Mound, built by the Adenas waaaaaay back in the day. This old postcard shows it had become a tourist attraction in the 1800's, and still is today. When you drive by it every day, you kind of forget how special it is. But every once in a while, I will just stop and look at it in amazement. You can read more about it.here.

In a bit more recent time, still on Jefferson Avenue, the West Virginia Penitentiary was built... in 1866.

If you were just driving by, you might at first think it is a castle. But a closer look would reveal the bars on all the windows. The prison closed in 1995, and is now a tourist attraction. Thousands of people come throughout the year for the daytime tours of the prison, and the night time ghost hunts. Interested? Read more here.

Moving up in history just a bit more, we come to last Saturday, September 20. 2014. Besides the Grave Creek Mound, and the former WV Penitentiary, Jefferson Avenue also features the main business district in Moundsville, and last Saturday, it featured the Fall Festival on the Avenue. The main feature of the festival this year may have been the weather. It was an absolutely beautiful fall day to showcase the 70 craft tables, and the shops, along with food, music, and other attractions. Around 5000 people came out to enjoy the day.

For the first time this year, we reserved the 2 spaces in front of our own shop for ourselves, and sold pumpkins right on the street.

Besides filling the booths, we also had a display on the sidewalk, making it quite full in front of our shop.

It was a very busy day! Quite a few of those 5000 people made their way into both our booth, and our shop. Kevin and Katie manned the outside booth. George and I ran the store. It took all 4 of us to keep up. In fact, we could have used another helper or two. We needed runners with wagons to take pumpkins to customers cars. We sold lots of pumpkins, but we would have sold more if we would have been able to take them to the cars. Something to remember for next year.

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted. And happy that the day had gone so well. Looking forward to next year! 

Lazy Days of Summer? Don't Think So!

What a crazy summer.

It's actually a bit of a blur.............

I guess what we'll remember most about it is the produce we started selling in front of the shop. It's a long, long story, but the end result was the addition of a farmer's market to our business.

It all started with a simple lemonade stand. George built it - I think he did a great job on it! 

Then we decided since we were setting up outside, we may as well add a few baked goods.....

And then came the garden produce.....

We did not grow it ourselves. We did have a garden, but it was nothing to brag about, let alone sell anything from. We actually bought the produce from the Amish, who have a way with gardening!

The garden produce is winding down with the approach of fall, but that means the pumpkins and gourds and corn shocks and Indian corn are in full swing!

In fact, they are taking over our shop! But that's ok, I LOVE fall!

Every summer is busy it seems. 

But this one has been our all time busiest. 

Fortunately, we did get a chance to relax before all the craziness started.

We spent a few days at the beach in June.

We are very tempted to do it again in September. 

Or October.

Or.....

Well, anytime sounds good!

Remind me to keep this blog updated. 

It has been suffering lately,

but we'll see if it can be brought back to the front burner.