Craft fair aids trio of nonprofits
(Courtesy photo) The third annual Ponderay Arts and Crafts Festival on Nov. 23 features Mystic Farm Wildlife Rescue to help raise funds for the fawns. There will be holiday gifts aplenty with 42 vendors lining the halls and main room of the Ponderay Event Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
(Courtesy photo) Some of the candles that will be for sale during the third annual Ponderay Arts and Crafts Festival on Nov. 23, which features Mystic Farm Wildlife Rescue to help raise funds for the fawns. There will be holiday gifts aplenty with 42 vendors lining the halls and main room of the Ponderay Event Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
SANDPOINT — The third annual Ponderay Arts and Crafts Festival is coming up just in time for the holiday season.
With 42 vendors made up of local artists, crafters and others, there will be plenty of gift ideas for everyone at the festival.
“There is a lot of excellent stuff,” said Dory McIsaac from Mystic Farm Wildlife Rescue, the featured nonprofit for the event.
McIsaac, who helped start the event in 2017, said she has been to a number of holiday arts and crafts festivals, and the Ponderay Arts and Crafts Festival “really is a good one.” With so many vendors, they not only fill up the main event room at the Ponderay Events Center, they line the hallways with the many booths. Gringo Food Fusion will be selling food as well.
McIsaac will be selling her handmade Mystic Farm candles, which come in a variety of scents. She has also been busy making antler art to sell this year, she said, such as wind chimes, candle holders, keychains and other items. There will be T-shirts and hats for sale to support the wildlife rescue as well.
There will be raffles, including a 50/50 raffle where people will not only have a chance to win “incredible” stuff that the event vendors donate, a portion of the funds will be distributed to three nonprofits — Mystic Farm, Birds of Prey Northwest and American Heritage Wildlife Foundation.
“So they will be benefiting from the raffle as well, so that is kind of a cool thing,” McIsaac said.
McIsaac said the goal this year is to expand the event to include other nonprofits, so American Heritage will be there with a booth. Birds of Prey Northwest is unable to attend, she said, so there will be information on the nonprofit at the Mystic Farm table.
Licensed through the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Mystic Farm Wildlife Rescue is a nonprofit that primarily takes in orphaned or injured fawns. Besides taking in the fawns, rehabilitating them and releasing them back into the wild, a lot of what Mystic Farm focuses on is community education. As people reach out to her every day with concerns over fawns that appear to be abandoned or orphaned, that is not always the case, McIsaac said. The mothers will often leave the babies alone for some time, but they typically return.
“My ideal year is no fawns — that’s never happened, but it would be ideal,” McIsaac said.
The nonprofit receives no state or federal funding, so McIsaac said they depend on event like the Ponderay Arts and Crafts Festival to keep them up and running.
The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, in the Ponderay Event Center, 401 Bonner Mall Way.
Mary Malone can be reached by email at mmalone@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.