Food and Folk Festival grows in its second year

SOAP LAKE — Last year, the sun blazed down on the Soap Lake Food and Folk Festival. This year the temperature was kinder, but Mother Nature still got in her little joke. 

“Later in the day, it rained, and people got up and just scattered,” said organizer Ruthann Tobiason. “But there were a few who were prepared and had coats with hoods and stuff. (The rain) didn't last very long.” 

The folks who came were treated to some really impressive music, Tobiason said. 

“The Killdeer String Band from Ellensburg … That one was amazing,” she said. “I’d never heard them before. I’d listened to some cuts online, but in person they’re just amazing. Same with Ranger and the Rearrangers.” 

High Desert Foxes, a local band, dropped its new single at a party at Cloudview Kitchen Friday evening, to a sizable audience. 

“They ran out of room inside Cloudview,” Tobiason said. “So, people just sat on the sidewalk, 20 (people) or so. And then there were some people in their cars with their windows down because the music was amplified enough that you could hear it outside.” 

A major draw was Valentin Lysenko, a bandura virtuoso based in Seattle. The bandura is a traditional instrument of Ukraine, shaped kind of like a lopsided lute with as many as 65 strings and with a sound similar to a harpsichord. It’s so much a staple of Ukrainian culture that the Soviet government tried to eradicate the instrument and its players, exiling or executing bandurists, according to the Center for World Music. 

Soap Lake’s Ukrainian community came out in force to see Lysenko, Tobiason said. 

“About 50 people showed up just for that,” she said. “They were serious; they brought their lawn chairs … It was clear who came to see him.” 

Besides the music, there were activities around the park for all ages. There were craft vendors, food vendors, a beer garden operated by Mi Cocinita Mexican Bar and Grill, games for the youth and miniature horses for children to pet from Kindhearted Therapy.  

This is the second year that the Friends of the Lower Grand Coulee has hosted the festival, and it was very much a team effort, according to a post on the FLGC’s social media. Twenty volunteers spent 290 hours setting up, managing and cleaning up, the post said. 

Tobiason wasn’t sure how many people had come out but estimated 300-400, she thought. Visitors were asked to fill out a survey to let them know what worked and what didn’t and while most attendees didn’t, 84 of them did compared to about 30 last year. 

“If that's an indicator of the percentage of people who attended, I feel pretty comfortable saying it was more than last year,” she said.