2018 Guide to the Chester Fall Festival

| Aug 25, 2018 | Comments 0

©2018 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Now in its 44th year, the Chester Fall Festival is weekend filled with toe-tapping music, great arts and crafts, good food and friends. And it’s set in the gorgeous Vermont town of Chester. There is no wonder that the Vermont Chamber of Commerce named it one of the state’s Top 10 Fall Events in 2017.

Quilted Jardin

This year, the event runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 15 and 16, and a whopping 70 vendors will fill the Green, the Academy Building lawn and land in front of the Brookside Cemetery.

Vendors will be offering everything from maple cotton candy to handmade jewelry, hand-turned wooden bowls, fine art, hand-felted goods, homemade soups, hand-blown glass and more.

It’s a great start to the gift-giving season. See the full list of vendors below. The business names of those with websites or Facebook pages are clickable. It’s a great way to learn more about them.

The Fall Festival is sponsored by the Chester Rotary and proceeds from vendor fees and its soup sales go to support local educational and community initiatives. For the past, four years, The Chester Telegraph has teamed up with the Rotary to present this guide. Twenty percent of the proceeds from the advertising on this page will be donated to the Rotary. Please frequent these and all of our advertisers.

Wander on Words calligraphy.

As always, admission to the Fall Festival is free.

Click the following links to take down you to:
MUSICAL PERFORMANCES
CHILDREN’S ACTIVITIES AND MORE
DIRECTIONS and PRINTABLE MAP
PARKING and SHUTTLE BUS
COMPLETE VENDOR LIST

There is a lot to do and see so plan your Chester visit now. For more information about the Fall Festival click here and check out the Fall Festival’s Facebook page. For answers to questions not answered in the above links, call Nancy Rugg at 802-875-2444.

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MUSICAL PERFORMANCES

 

Live entertainment will be filling the air at the Fall Festival, with music to suit just about everyone’s taste.

Multi-instrumentalist Owen Nied

Saturday, Sept. 15

  • 11 a.m.-noon: Owen Nied, of Chester, singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist.
  • 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.: Will Danforth, of Grafton, playing good time American roots music on guitar, frailin’ banjo and wailin’ blues harp.
  • 2:30 to to 3:30 p.m.: Matt Meserve, of Springfield, piano and vocals of the music you love.

Blues guitarist Chris Kleeman

Sunday, Sept. 16

  • 11 a.m. to noon: Ida Mae & John Specker of Andover perform their home-grown fiddle and banjo music.
  • 12:30 to 1:30 p.m.: Root 7 of Burlington is an a capella group with lively vocals in all genres and for all audiences.
  • 2 to 3 p.m.: Chris Kleeman of Chester, a virtuoso blues guitarist and performer.

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CHILDREN’S EVENTS & MORE

There is plenty to do in an around the Green on this wonderful weekend.

  • Check out the Children’s Tent, run by Emily Burkland of the Community Art Garden, as she leads kids in the creative process.
  • Spinning and knitting with Six Loose Ladies, at the store, 287 Main St.
  • Country Treasures quilt shop, 12 The Common, has extended its Sunday hours to 10 to 4 p.m.
  • Whiting Library Book Sale, in front of the library, 117 Main St. 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Hundreds of gently used books.
  • Saturday ‘Leafpeeper’ Pancake Breakfast, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 313 Main St. 8 to 11 a.m. $6 per person.
  • Book signings at Phoenix Books Misty Valley, 58 the Common
    10 to 4 p.m. Saturday     — Megan Price, author of five volumes of the hilarious Vermont Wild: Adventures of Fish & Game Wardens. *Price has just granted Emmy-nominated Hollywood producer/director Geoffrey Sharp the exclusive right to bring the stories to millions of TV viewers.
    noon to 2 p.m. Sunday — Erin Rounds, author of Charlotte’s Bones: the Beluga Whale in a Farmer’s Field, the mesmerizing, science-based telling of how a whale ended up in Vermont.
  • Saturday Afternoon Beer Garden at the Fullerton Inn, 40 the Common. (cost of food and drink)
  • Chester Town Government Booth: Learn about the myriad projects around town and implementation of the Village Center Master Plan. Near the Information Booth next to the Academy Building. Saturday only.
  • Fund-raisers: In and around the Green during the festival, you’ll also find booths set up as fundraisers for the various school and community events.

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DIRECTIONS

To enlarge or print the map, click on it.

The beautiful Victorian town of Chester, Vt., sits along Routes 103 and 11 in Southern Vermont. You’ll find beautiful homes, charming shops and friendly people at every turn.

CAKE Jewelry

From I-91, take Exit 6 and travel 12 miles west along Route 103. Keep going straight into downtown Chester. You can’t miss the Green. (Do not turn right onto Route 103 at Maple Street.)

From the west, take Route 11 in Manchester, traveling east. You’ll pass Bromley Ski Resort and the town of Londonderry, then head straight into Chester and the Green. It’s about a 30-minute drive from Manchester to Chester.

From the north, take Route 103 South into Chester. You’ll drive through the historic Stone Village and curve past Town Hall on your left and the historic Chester Depot Train Station on your right. Be sure to slow down. When you come to the fork in the road, bear right and head into downtown Chester.

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PARKING & SHUTTLE

Designated parking will be at the NewsBank parking lot behind NewsBank off of Cobleigh Street. Look for the parking signs at Main and Cobleigh streets. (See map.)

Two Wooden Spoons granola

There will be a handicap drop off at the eastern side of the Green.

The Current Shuttle Bus returns this year with a longer route that will run from 8:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. on both days.

It will loop from the NewsBank Parking Lot, stop at the westside of the Green before heading east to stop and turn around at the former Jiffy Mart site at Depot Street. Riders can get on or off the bus at anytime during its loop.

At 1 p.m. on both days, the Shuttle Bus also will pick up riders at the Chester Train Station and return them to the station between 3:30 and 4 p.m. There is no charge for this service.

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2018 Fall Festival Vendors


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Filed Under: Community and Arts Life • In the Arts • In the Community • Latest News

About the Author: Cynthia Prairie has been a newspaper editor more than 40 years. Cynthia has worked at such publications as the Raleigh Times, the Baltimore News American, the Buffalo Courier Express, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Patuxent Publishing chain of community newspapers in Maryland, and has won numerous state awards for her reporting. As an editor, she has overseen her staffs to win many awards for indepth coverage. She and her family moved to Chester, Vermont in 2004.

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