Piper Barn Show opens Wednesday
MOSES LAKE — There’s a lot going on at the Piper Barn Show this week, but one thing not to miss is the cinnamon rolls.
“They are amazing,” said Julie Piper Phipps, who organizes the four-day market every year. “People line up and wait for them. They make about 400 a day and they sell out by noon.”
Phipps’ daughters and daughters-in-law – whom she calls “her girls” – make the rolls, she said, much like she did when the show debuted in 1988. Phipps’ mom, Sheila Piper, started the show on the family farm with a friend in 1988. Circumstances forced them to close it up in 2001, but when Phipps and her husband moved back to Moses Lake in 2012, she decided to start the ball rolling again.
“It was just very fond memories for me,” she said. “I always looked forward to show week when I could be with all of those women who I very much looked up to. So when I came back … I thought we could start this again.”
The Piper Barn Holiday Show has 50-55 vendors this year, all selected by Phipps. There’s Christmas décor, antiques, furniture, and a whole lot of crafts and artisan items.
“I go to lots of different shows around the state, and I handpick (the vendors),” Phipps said. “I limit the amount of the same kinds of things, so I only have a couple of candle vendors and I only have a couple of gals who crochet things. I try to make sure that there’s a big variety of things.”
Part of the vendor agreement involves each vendor spending about four hours working at the show, Phipps said. She charges a percentage of sales.
“I have grandmas that bring me a basket of crocheted dish rags, and then I have vendors that pull in with two trailers full of furniture,” she said. “Because I do it like that, if you sell 20% of this little basket of things you have, that’s fine. And if you sell whatever percentage of your furniture, it’s all the same.”
Two authors will be there this year, Phipps said. One is science fiction author Chris Mandeville, who has also written a children’s book about her service dog, Oski. The other is Phipps’ daughter Rebecka Lefoll, who will debut her children’s book “Jeffrey and the Christmas Barn,” about a mouse who lives in the barn and watches the show every year.
Besides the cinnamon rolls, Smulligan’s in Moses Lake will serve lunch and dinner every day, and Overpour Coffee will have coffee and cocoa.
The show typically attracts about 2,000 people over the course of the four days, Phipps said. Over the years it’s overflowed the original barn into a nearby shed. The show has grown every year, Phipps said, except for 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to take a year off.
Phipps’ girls help out, and so do some friends who come in from out of town. The show is as much a social occasion for them as a business, she said.
“I have some local gals that come and help me clean the barn and clean the shop and get everything ready beforehand,” she said. “And I do all of the vendor recruitment until then. But then this week, when everybody comes, that’s the fun part. Everybody says, ‘Oh, it’s so stressful.’ I’m like, ‘No, this is the best part right here. This is where we have dinner every night together and we visit and make sure that everything’s ready for the next day.’ It really is a girls’ week.”
Piper Barn Holiday Show
12-7 p.m. Nov. 5
10 a.m.-7 p.m. Nov. 6-7
9 a.m.-3 p.m. Nov. 8
1508 Road S NE, Moses Lake
Admission $7 Wednesday, free the rest of the week
Christmas crafts are a large part of the draw to the Piper Barn Holiday Show.
The Piper Barn is located about 10 miles east of Moses Lake.