HAMILTON — From arts and crafts and fresh produce and apple pies you can find it all during Hamilton's 41st Apple Days.
Hailed as the "Biggest Bake Sale under the Big Sky", the Apple Day Festival was teeming with life Saturday morning.
“We live in Hamilton, and it gives back to the museum, so we had to give back to the community.” Norman Lee is a co-owner of Lavender with Love and was selling pumpkins as a side “gig”, and the main apple pie selling event gives proceeds to the Ravalli County Museum.
Lee says that COVID-19 did not impact his business too much, but with his volunteering it has caused minor issues.
“I also volunteer as a chaplain for the hospital so we had a few issues with that, but we’ve been fortunate in that and I work from home," said Lee.
Down the road past many other vendors, another farmers have had issues due to the pandemic.
“It changed what we are selling, our initial plan for this year as a farm was to have a self-serve salad bar at farmers market which we're all excited about and planned for an planted accordingly and so we're not offering the salad bar this year because it's just wouldn't work.”
Laura Garber is a certified organic vegetable, hemp and seed farmer, and offered free hemp seed oil infused baguettes as a taste lab for customers.
She says Apple Days is to showcase the fruits and vegetables of the Bitterroot Valley
“It's a really fun way for us to highlight the kinds of things we grow in the Bitterroot Valley to people beyond just Hamilton and so Apple days really encourages other people from around the states to come together and see all the things that the Bitterroot Valley has to offer," said Garber.
To find all the vendors who participated, or if you're interested in finding more produce you can click here.
