SEQUIM — Crowds, many sporting umbrellas, braved light, intermittent rains Saturday, but it was meek compared to a downpour that deterred festival-goers and closed down vendors early the day before.
Friday night’s rain that began to build after 4 p.m. significantly watered down concert attendance at the Sequim Lavender Festival’s Street Fair and the new Sequim Lavender Farm Faire’s Lavender in the Park.
Festival-goers, believed to be in the thousands, came back strong at the two venues Saturday, but they appeared to thin out again when light rains returned — but not to the extent they did Friday night.
Today, for which weather forecasters said will be cloudy but probably dry, wraps up both three-day festivals.
Each opens at 9 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m.
If things stay dry, it should be a good finish to what Sequim boosters call lavender weekend, which opened with rain Friday afternoon.
The Pearl Django concert Friday, originally planned at the Sequim Lavender Festival Street Fair main stage, had to be moved under the tent top of the small beer and wine tent, limiting the number attending to fewer than 30 as rains came down.
The same rains soaked many in the crowd of fewer than 300 at the Beatles tribute concert by the band Creme Tangerine at the Sequim Lavender Farm Faire’s show at the James Center for the Performing Arts bandshell.
People at that show danced in the rain anyway, but others huddled under tents, umbrellas, hooded parkas and blankets.
Last year, Creme Tangerine drew more than 2,000 at the same venue in good weather.
It was the wettest opening day in Sequim’s 15-year Lavender Festival history.
Both lavender weekend events started out Saturday with steady rain that dissipated after 10 a.m.
The rest of Saturday saw ominous dark clouds finally yield light rains after 2 p.m. and spit precipitation off and on the rest of the afternoon.
“There was like little rivers running through people’s booths,” said Kristi Short, Sequim High School’s agriculture teacher, who was working at the Lavender Hill Farms booth at the Sequim Lavender Festival Street Fair on Fir Street.
But Short added that even as rains fell Saturday morning, people milled about the Street Fair.
While the Street Fair’s more than 200 vendors were encouraged to shut down after 5 p.m. Friday, so it went for the Farm Faire’s Lavender in the Park vendors.
Many vendors, some saying business was slow, praised the new Lavender in the Park venue, saying it was a beautiful, mellow setting.
“I like it. It’s very comfortable. I think the park is beautiful,” said Harold Vadset, who along with his wife, Virginia, had a booth at Lavender in the Park that was lined with healthy-looking tomato plants fed by their natural worm tea fertilizer, which is at the root of their business, Sequim Prairie Star Enterprises.
Some vendors, such as Vickie and John Bushnell with Bushnell of Bremerton, said crowds were slightly thinner and business was somewhat slower.
“We chose the Sequim Lavender Farmers Association because the Sequim Lavender Growers Association had a waiting list,” Vickie Bushnell said.
Sequim Police Chief Bill Dickinson, who was on foot patrol at Lavender in the Park, said the events went off without any trouble save for parking complaints, a lost child and the usual medical-related calls.
Neither Mary Jendrucko, Sequim Lavender Festival director, nor Scott Nagel, Sequim Lavender Farm Faire director, was available Saturday to comment on the day’s events or attendance.
Hundreds jammed the original festival’s Street Fair on Friday morning shortly after it opened at 9 a.m. on Fir Street.
Hundreds more milled through the vendor tents at the new Lavender in the Park event the same morning at Carrie Blake Park, put on by the Sequim Lavender Farmers Association.
Visitors had already dropped in on many of the more than 30 Sequim lavender farms that were open for business earlier in the week.
Shelli Robb-Kahler, Sequim-Dungeness Valley Chamber of Commerce executive director, said Friday that recreational-vehicle parks and campgrounds were at full capacity in the region, but lodging establishments in the area had a limited number of vacancies Friday.
How rainy weather — which rolled in on Sequim’s lavender events Friday afternoon after the sun broke through cloudy skies — would affect the ultimate outcome of the two events was yet to be seen Saturday.
Sequim Lavender Farmers Association’s member farmers broke away from the original Sequim Lavender Growers Association in January, citing administrative and philosophical differences.
“I’m thrilled with the way it looks,” said Terry Stolz, Sequim Lavender Growers Association president, on Friday morning at the Street Fair before joining in the Lavender Festival’s official opening before noon.
Because of the split in the organization, Stolz said, “we started five months behind.”
“It was like doing it all over again,” Stoltz said, “but there’s passion and drive in our organization, and with those combined, they’re unstoppable.”
The breakup resulted in the two simultaneous weekend events, both of which appeared to launch without a hitch Friday.
Dignitaries tossed out the traditional lavender buds to open the Sequim Lavender Festival’s main stage on North Third Avenue near Fir Street, while about a mile east down Fir at Carrie Blake Park, the inaugural Sequim Lavender Farm Faire’s Lavender in the Park festival was opened.
There, Japan Consul General Kiyokazu Ota cut a ribbon at the James Center bandshell, officially opening the new festival.
Nagel said at the Lavender in the Park opening that there is a distinct lavender connection between Sequim and Japan, where lavender is also a major industry.
A Japan tourism information table was set up at the Friendship Garden to get the word out about the country that in March was hammered by a powerful earthquake and tsunami that seriously damaged a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan.
“What we want everyone to know is that Japan is open for business,” said Ota, whose office is in Seattle.
“Travel to Japan is safe.”
While Sequim Mayor Pro Tem Laura Dubois officiated at the Sequim Lavender Festival’s opening, Sequim Mayor Ken Hays greeted Ota at the Friendship Garden, then escorted Ota around Carrie Blake Park and through the festival to the bandshell, where he helped him cut the opening ribbon along with state Rep. Steven Tharinger, D-Sequim, who is finishing his last year as Clallam County commissioner.
Saying the new Carrie Blake Park venue has a promising future for the second festival, Nagel said the festival was “honored to have our distinguished guests here today” from Japan.
Hays agreed with Nagel, saying, “I think it’s going to prove to be a great venue. We at the city are excited to see the festival expand with this site.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.
