Tri-town businesses out in force for Harbor Days
Jul 21, 2019
From left to right: Colin Zeigler, volunteer and outreach coordinator for the Buzzards Bay Coalition and volunteer Sam Lyons pose with a giant stuffed clam at Harbor Days. Photo by: Grace Ballenger
Mattapoisett Land Trust volunteers pose at the Land Trust’s Table. Photo by: Grace Ballenger
Friends of the Mattapoisett COA offered seahorse merchandise for sale. Photo by: Grace Ballenger
Abigail Field and another Historical Society volunteer pose by the group’s booth. The group was promoting its upcoming Great Community Picnic, among other things. Photo by: Grace Ballenger
Kevin Thompson, of Shenanicandies, at his booth. Photo by: Grace Ballenger
Mattapoisett Woodcarver Mike McCarthy works on a carving at his Mattapoisett Bird Works Booth. Photo by: Grace Balelnger
MATTAPOISETT — To get funache, pick up a specially-bred daylily, and discuss a custom piece of furniture with John Nadeau of JNJ Woodworking, a customer would normally need to cross town lines. Not so at Mattapoisett’s Harbor Days, which brought a number of local businesses out to Shipyard Park on July 21.
Helping Hands and Hooves did the same fundraiser that it has done for the last fifteen or so years. Organizers got the idea for the tried and true offering when they went to SeaWorld and learned how to make the hair wraps online.
Rochester-based Shenanicandies, which makes a product called funache that’s somewhere between ganache and fudge, had a booth at the fair. The company recently redid its logo and packaging, and Owner Kevin Thompson recently developed a butter pecan flavor.
Anderson Gray and Co., a nautical-themed bag maker out of Mattapoisett who started in 2016 has expanded his wares by starting a new leather line and focusing on crafting smaller things, like tiny humpback whales.
Elfriede Blackburn has worked at Harbor Days for thirty years. Her husband, Arthur, founded the festival in 1983, and she has been helping with the raffle and other parts of the festival for thirty years.
Blackburn helped to man the raffle table this year. The Lions Club offered booths to numerous businesses and craftsmen, asking in return that they donate a single item, which would be raffled off. Attendees could also put tickets into a grand raffle for more elaborate prizes, such as a Martha’s Vineyard getaway and $1,000 cash.
Just around the corner, fair attendees could find Abigail Field dressed up in a full-length skirt at the Mattapoisett Historical Society booth. Asked how she stood up to the heat in a long dress, field answered that the fabric is “very breatheable,” and she was “committed to the aesthetic.”
Tom Grondski said his wife, Cathy Jackie, started breeding hybrid daylillies for their farm, Tomcat Daylillies decades ago. However the Mattapoisett business couldn’t start coming to Harbor Days until four years ago, when their friend that introduced them to the flowers retired and moved up to Maine.
Grondski said that this time of year the farm looks like “a fireworks display,” with all the flowers in bloom.
