The Old Colony Company's BoothThanks to all our customers and festival goers who stopped by our booth at the National Apple Harvest Festival over the past two weekends. We had an amazing time meeting with you and sharing our newest products. We put our heart and soul into everything we make, and are grateful for your purchases and feedback. After two very busy weeks, we were exhausted Sunday evening, but we felt inspired and more deeply committed than ever to bringing you the finest handcrafted, locally sourced soaps and sundries.

While this year’s festival started on a cold, rainy note, it ended on a perfect, sunny October afternoon. This past Saturday and Sunday festivities saw record attendance, and one customer noted that the sponsors should change the name to Applestock or Applepalooza. Whatever you call it, the festival was clearly an apple bacchanalia with every conceivable apple food dish and libation being sold. We particularly enjoyed the apple daiquiris, apple dumplings, apple fritters and hot apple toddies, which paired well with Frank's sweet potato fries and the pumpkin funnel cakes.

Keeping with this apple theme, we created apple goat milk soap especially for the festival. With the scent of freshly picked Macintosh apples and ground chamomile, this soap creates an exceptionally rich and fragrant lather reminiscent of early autumn. Given the overwhelming demand for this soap, we will be offering it on our website in the coming week. Stay tuned for this and more new product offerings.

Street SignFinally, we want to thank our family and friends who gave up their weekends to help us set up and run this event, especially, Laverne (employee 001 and art director), Sue, Jake, Denise, Pam, Zach, James and Lauren. A special thanks to John for designing and creating our new display stands -- many customers commented on how nice our display looked, and we could not have put this booth together without your help. I also want to thank my sister Pat for the weeks and months she spent creating our sustainable bamboo body cloths. These were so popular in our gift sets that we started selling them separately at the festival and completely sold out! We are lucky to have such incredible talent in our family and such generous friends.

We are looking forward to seeing you at our next event, the Country Peddler Craft Show, October 22-23 at the Frederick County Fairgrounds in Frederick, Maryland.