CROSS ROADS — While many annual festivals and events are recovering from a lost year, Cross Roads farmer Russell Foster started from scratch with this weekend’s inaugural North Texas Lavender Festival, a two-day event featuring three lavender farms from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Foster hosted the festival at his Cross Roads business, TX-Ture Farm, which makes hand-crafted products using his own alpacas, Christmas trees, gourds, honey and lavender. Perhaps more important than those products, he said, is the experience — his farm is available for school field trips and offers programs like “Alpaca Yoga” — which led him to plan this year’s inaugural lavender festival.
Russell Foster, right, assists people as they shop for several types of lavender products during the North Texas Lavender Festival on Saturday in Cross Roads.
“Everyone was saying they want to get outside, so we said ‘Hey, let’s throw a party,’” Foster said. “The festival happened because of COVID, but this is the new normal for us.”
The festival was organized in under two months, Foster said, and the two-day celebration features live music, local vendors, food trucks, art exhibits and three North Texas lavender farms — TX-Ture, Anna-based Fields of Fidelis and Rockwall-based Farmers Lavender Co.
“We encourage people to come out and do something they haven’t done before,” Foster said. “It’s kind of a dead zone out here from an entertainment standpoint. It’s just fun to see people out here having a good time.”
Foster said that in Texas, much of the lavender growing activity takes place in Hill Country, but that he’s hoping to expand the North Texas festival next year to help grow the herb’s local presence. AJ Fidelman, who co-owns Fields of Fidelis in Anna along with his wife, said lavender simply takes more effort and attention to grow effectively than many mass-produced crops.
“The reason it’s not popular is because it’s very time-consuming and difficult,” Fidelman said. “But Texas has more lavender farms than most people realize.”
AJ Fidelman, Fields of Fidelis co-owner, fills sachets with lavender during the North Texas Lavender Festival at TX-Ture Farms on Saturday in Cross Roads.
Saturday, Fidelman positioned himself in front of his farm’s tent, selling sachets of dried lavender he filled on the spot for any passersby. An Army veteran, Fidelman said his farm works with veteran-focused organizations, one of which helps him harvest his product when the time comes.
Foster said he’s hoping for a turnout of about 2,500 people across the weekend, and was pleased with the early results from the first few hours Saturday. Tickets cost $10 for adults and $5 for kids, and the festival runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday.
Stacy Burnett brought his girlfriend, a lavender enthusiast, up from Roanoke to the festival on Saturday. They’ve started to get out to more events recently, he said, and the lavender festival was appealing when he found it online because it was unique.
“Obviously, there haven’t been a lot of traditional festivals,” Burnett said. “This wasn’t that far and it’s a little bit unusual.”
June 27, 2021 at 05:19AM
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At North Texas Lavender Festival, area farms team up to spotlight lesser-grown herb - Denton Record Chronicle
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