With a chill in the air, hints of orange and red appearing in the trees and the whispering sounds of instruments flowing through the Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, fall had arrived at Abraham Lincoln’s old home.
The Lincoln Log Cabin’s festival of fall, a two-day, large-scale event titled Harvest Frolic, took place this weekend.
According to Board President of the Lincoln Log Cabin Foundation Lori Henderson, Harvest Frolic typically sees around 5,000 to 6,000 visitors.
The first step in planning an event like this, she said, is finding the artisans and performers that would fill the space.
“We’re looking for things that are family friendly, things that kids of all ages will like,” she said. “We are usually looking for something with a historic angle.”
Henderson said there were around 18 artisans and nine performers present at Harvest Frolic this year. Most people, she said, are found through referral or found at other historic events.
One such group of artisans was Jacob and Isaac Venatta, a father and son potter duo selling hand-crafted pots and other ceramic arts.
Industrial arts teacher at Cumberland High School Jacob Venatta has been making pottery for 25 years. He said he got his start in his sophomore year of high school, taught by his former art teacher John Graves.
Set up with his dad in a white tent on the path to Sargent Farm, current sophomore from Cumberland High School Isaac Venatta was at work throwing clay into new creations as visitors passed by.
Funnily enough, Graves was present at the festival as well in a tent just next door to the Venattas—three potters and their teachers in one corner of Harvest Frolic.
“It’s been awesome; it’s been a really good show,” Jacob Venatta said. “Pleasantly surprised with the weather. We thought it was going to be a rain out.”
This event was planned by the board of the Lincoln Log Cabin Foundation, starting often over six months in advance.
As board president, Henderson heads up the effort for planning the event, but all eight board members are crucially important to planning, she said.
Harvest Frolic and the Lincoln Log Cabin are privately funded by donors and grants. This year, the event cost around $25,000 to $30,000, Henderson said.
Some of the grants they receive are from the Charleston Area Charitable Foundation, Mattoon’s tourism office and Charleston’s tourism office.
Occasionally, she said, the cabin events get corporate sponsorships. This year, First Neighbor Bank in Toledo sponsored Harvest Frolic. Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center often sponsors cabin events as well, Henderson said.
Just across the way from the ceramists was a tent covered top to bottom in colorful framed paintings.
Manning the booth was Valerie Skinner, a watercolor artist specializing in 18th century work. Her artwork is inspired by art and artists from the colonies in the years 1710-1810, she said.
This year was Skinner’s first time coming to the Lincoln Log Cabin. She lives in Kentucky near Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace in LaRue County, so she felt it would be right to come.
Skinner has been doing folk art since the 1990s, she said.
“We grew up going to historical sites, and we always drew as a family and painted things,” she said. “It just kind of evolved.”
Skinner said she has travelled across the country from Washington D.C. to South Carolina to northern Michigan presenting her work in art and historical events alike.
Just across the way, sitting in front of the Visitor Center was Mike Anderson, a mountain dulcimer player.
According to Anderson, the mountain dulcimer is said to be the only truly American instrument, originating from the Appalachian Mountain region in the 1800s.
“Although, I don’t think that’s true because it’s just a zither; it’s the American version of a zither,” he said.
Anderson has been playing the dulcimer since what he jokingly called the folk scare of the 1970s, where musicians like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were, as he said, threatening to become popular.
“There were a million stand up solo male guitar playing people, and you had to find some way to differentiate yourself,” he said.
From Jacksonville, Illinois, Anderson has been performing at the cabin for the last several years. He said the Lincoln Log Cabin found and invited him because he performs often at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum up in Springfield.
Cabin events like Harvest Frolic are run almost entirely by volunteers, according to Henderson. There are a core 40-60 volunteers currently at the Lincoln Log Cabin.
“This is a 99.99% volunteer program,” she said. “This event is volunteer driven, volunteer staffed. Without those volunteers, we couldn’t do any of this.”
Harvest Frolic has been going on for over 30 years, Henderson said. Previous site manager Tom Vance was in charge when the event started.
In its current iteration, Harvest Frolic has been steadily put on by the cabin since 2014, with the exception of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
At the event, on the southeast bound path toward the Lincoln Cabin and Farm, a local face could be found woodcarving.
Retired EIU math professor Cheryl Hawker was one of the vendors at Harvest Frolic.
“If you ever wondered what happens to your professors after they retire, here’s one place they end up: carving spoons,” Hawker said.
This year, Hawker was carving and selling wooden spoons.
Hawker has been volunteering at Lincoln Log Cabin since 1986. Both of her children, she said, volunteered at the cabin for much of their childhoods, with her son starting at five months old.
“For the first two summers, he had to pretend to be a baby, and he did a beautiful job of it,” Hawker said with a laugh.
She said she has loved history for her whole life, noting that she would look out and stop for historical markers anytime her family travelled.
“Even though I was a math professor, I think I was a latent historian, and I didn’t realize it,” she said.
This year, the hurricane influenced weather delayed setting up the event, Henderson said.
While typically tents are set up a day in advance, because of the storm, more specifically the wind, final preparations had to be held off until Saturday morning.
According to Henderson, Harvest Frolic will come around again next year when the tide of fall brings it back into shore.
Alli Hausman can be reached at 581-2812 or at athausman@eiu.edu.
