Family starting new harvest festival

KOOTENAI — The harvest used to be a centerpiece of regional life — a time to celebrate the bounties of a year’s hard work.

A local family with deep ties to the history of local farming hope to restore that celebration by establishing a new harvest festival. Beginning this weekend with a soft opening and continuing Oct. 5-6 and Oct. 12-13, the festival is an effort to reconnect the public with some of the county’s venerable agricultural traditions. Weather permitting, the events will take place 3 p.m. to dusk on Fridays and 10 a.m. to dusk on weekends. All festivities will take place at Hickey Farm, 674 Hickey Road, located 5.7 miles down Highway 200 from Sandpoint.

“Bonner County used to be a huge agricultural center, and it’s alarming to see where it’s all gone,” said Karrie Holt, one of the event planners.

Organized by Dean Holt, Karrie Holt, Jeff Holt and farm owner Jim Hickey, the Harvest Festival will combine food, beverages and family entertainment with good, old-fashioned pumpkin picking. The idea is to bring a solid harvest festival tradition — similar to Washington’s popular Green Bluff region — back to North Idaho.

“There’s no reason why we can’t have something like that here,” Dean Holt said.

Appropriately, one of the major focuses at the harvest festival will be pumpkins, and luckily, there are more than enough to go around. Hickey Farm dedicated one of its 360 acres for pumpkin and gourd produce this year, and between 2,000 and 2,500 pumpkins are ready for purchase as a result. The Holts hope to sell out their entire inventory at the festival dates without unloading the remainder to retail locations. In addition, a percentage of all pumpkin sales Oct. 12-13 will be donated to Oden Hall in memory of Jack and Lois Hickey.

According to the Holts, the produce comes in about eight different varieties encompassing a huge number of shapes and sizes. Pumpkins range from modest 10-pounders to 200-pound behemoths. Some varieties are smooth and round — perfect for carving jack-o-lanterns — while others look like orange popcorn balls with their rippling texture.  

There will be plenty of other attractions to bring families down to the farm aside from pumpkin shopping, too. The Holts plan to have jump castles for the kids. Local food and coffee vendors will be available, as will Litehouse cider. Attendees will also be able to shop for antiques and unique finds. In addition, they’ve fashioned a child-friendly corn maze — it’s too small for the adults this year, but if it proves popular, they’ll consider growing a larger one for next year.

“This is really our test run,” Karrie Holt said. “The interest we see this year will help us determine where this is going to take us and how much demand there is.”