Pioneer Crafts Festival to take place April 19-20
From the beans and greens supper to the demonstration of homesteading crafts, the Pioneer Crafts Festival in Rison serves as a bridge to the past while offering fun for the weekend.
The festival takes place April 19-20 at Pioneer Village, which consists of several historical buildings that serve as an example of a South Arkansas community in the late 1800s. The village includes a one-room log cabin with a smokehouse and herb garden. There is also a Methodist episcopal church built in 1867, a country mercantile store that sells handmade crafts and related items, a Victorian home, and a blacksmith shop complete with anvil and bellows and all the tools of the trade.
A dog trot house, recently donated to Pioneer Village, has been extensively refurbished. Named The Beard House, it will be open for tours for the first time during the festival.
The Pioneer Crafts Festival kicks off on April 19 with a greens and beans supper from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. “A lot of people around here enjoy that type of cooking, plus we have a bluegrass group playing during the supper and throughout the day on the 20th,” Berry said. The beans and greens supper costs $10 per person.
The festival runs from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m. on April 20, with demonstrators and vendors set up in buildings and throughout the village grounds. The entry fee is $5 per person with children under six years of age free.
Contests like the beard-growing contest will add to the fun. Festival-goers are encouraged to dress in pioneer-era fashion, and craft demonstrators will be in period costumes as well.
Some crafts that will be demonstrated at this year’s Pioneer Crafts Festival include wool spinning, butter making, Dutch oven cooking, crocheting and embroidering. “We have a demonstrator scheduled who does tanning,” Malinda Berry, one of the event organizers, said. “She actually takes pelts and demonstrates how to prepare them for tanning." There will also be a blacksmith working in the village blacksmith shop, a group using a treadle sewing machine to demonstrate quilting, a Civil War reenactment group, and someone demonstrating the telegraph and Morse code in the old post office.
Food and merchandise vendors will also be on site. Berry said vendors will have a variety of items for sale, not just crafts.
The village mercantile will sell cookies, fudge, and other goodies. In one of the other buildings, there will be a tea room where festival-goers can sit down and enjoy tea and goodies.
A concession stand offering hamburgers, hot dogs, and other fare will be open and will serve as the Pioneer Village's main fundraiser.
“In the early days of the festival there were an awful lot of craftspeople that were available to demonstrate pioneer-era crafts and skills,” Berry said. The festival was popular in the 70s, 80s and 90s but faded along with people’s interest in crafting. Pioneer Village volunteers began to revive the festival in 2023. Berry said it is important to keep this knowledge alive.
In addition to the festival, the town of Rison emphasizes homesteading and rural living in other ways. It’s located in Cleveland County, which bills itself as “America’s Homestead. Real. Simple. Life.”
Each spring, the South Arkansas Homesteading Conference takes place in Rison. The conference provides information and demonstrations of various skills and methods for attaining a sustainable, self-sufficient lifestyle. Speakers discuss gardening, small farm livestock, food preservation, herbs and herbal remedies, alternative energy, and more.