If you weren’t already convinced that, yes, Christmas is close at hand—the opening of the Christmas Store at the Clover Valley Farmers’ Market building on McIrvine Road here at 10 a.m. this Saturday should quash all your doubts.
This is the 14th season for the popular holiday store run by Lowey’s Greenhouse and Market Garden owners Donna and Blair Lowey of Fort Frances.
At least 20 vendors will showcase their Christmas crafts at the store, and Lowey’s will take up the slack with their own greenhouse-grown poinsettias and a wide assortment of Christmas trees from Wisconsin.
“We’ll have new vendors’ [crafts] and some who’ve come back that have been away for awhile—I’m happy about that,” Donna Lowey said yesterday, during a break from unpacking merchandise there.
Included in the lineup of giftware and collectibles to be available at the Christmas store are near life-size snowmen, fresh wreaths, jewelry, wood crafts and carvings, hand-painted items, ornaments, and handmade pottery.
Local vendors include Terril Pentney, John Wood, Cheryl Westover, Kate Woods, Rowena Hammond, Donna Cannon, Diane Glowasky, Linda Lovisa, Sheila Shaw, and Iris Gogosha, who will have an array of goodies available for the holiday dinner table.
“We’ll have fresh baking, including perogies and cabbage rolls,” said Lowey. Also on hand every Saturday to sell homemade baking will be grade eight students from St. Francis School, who will be fundraising for their school trip to Toronto and Niagara Falls in June 2005.
Poinsettias will be available sometime next week, with Christmas trees ready for purchase after the American Thanksgiving holiday Nov. 25.
Christmas store hours will be 10 a.m. -6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday to Thursday, and 10 a.m.-8 p.m. on Fridays until Dec. 24.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
