Cliff had the truck all packed by 7:15 am with my fabric creations, our folding chairs, folded table, and anything else we would need for our long long day.  I brought peaches, cut up cantaloupe, and lots of bottled water.  After my tent was set up, Cliff helped others get their tents up.  The L&N Depot was a bustling place this morning with energy and chatter as vendors displayed their goods in hopes for a very successful day.  Down by the riverwalk there was music, clogging performances, demonstrations, and other activities.  Today's hours were advertised as 9-4 but people started arriving after 8.

I met the photographer at this tent.  His work is wonderful.  I fell in love with his abandoned barn scenes framed with old barn wood.  The vendor to my left makes copper jewelry and moves like the energizer bunny.  Her 11-year old daughter spent 15 minutes trying on different hats on my table.  She kept going back to a bright yellow one and I could see the wheels turning as she was trying to figure out how she could own it.  I told if it was ok with her mother, we'd barter and she could have the yellow bucket hat.  The temperature hit 88 by the time we left at 4 and she kept the hat on the whole time.

Today the vendor on my right was quite an interesting man who makes character birdhouses.  After working for the same company in California for 47 years, he took an early retirement, bought some acreage here because he could no longer afford to live in California, and started designing and building birdhouses to sell.  He told us that about an hour from us toward Franklin are three old ruby mines where he goes and searches for rubies.  We never knew there were ruby mines here.

Some of the tents to our left.   All the produce vendors are grouped together at the entrance of the market.  Today I bought fresh beets, carrots, broccoli from my Candy Mountain farmers and a delicious olive oil bread and blueberry muffins from their son who stayed up all night baking dozens of fresh bread and blueberry muffins for today. He's earning money toward his dorm expenses when he starts college this fall. No rain, no distant thunder today.  We were hot and weary by 4 and ready to get into the air conditioning.  I had a fairly good day, sold lots of items.  If you count all the hours of sewing and sitting at the market, it's not really very profitable.  But people at the markets don't expect to get rich.  We're amazed by the number of educated people who have retired or left high paying stress jobs to settle in this area and reinvent themselves.  Peace and contentment.