Some “Maaahem” at the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival 2025

Some festivals are truly magical - and at the top of my list is the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival.
It takes place in West Friendship, MD in May, it has over 200 vendors of everything sheepish, woolly, organic, and fiber-related - the best place for some Sheep Incognito art to be hanging out.

This year - as every year - we set up our big, heavy 10’x20’ heavy duty art canopy, with a shorter 10’x10 art canopy behind it. We filled the space with my Propanel display panels, and all the art I could schlepp along, to bring smiles and some sheepishness to the festival. As always, people were happy to see us, and were “adopting” soooo many of my art pieces to take home from the festival. We were having a blast!
And then, on Saturday, a storm popped up on our weather app. We were all prepared - weather at the festival can be anything, usually more like rain/wind at some point during or after the festival. We closed up most of the tent, except for a small doorway at the front. The back tent we had all the tarps on the side to keep rain and wind out.
This time, though, the weather app tricked us a bit : rather than a “strong thunderstorm”, it was a “weak tornado-type thing” that blew through - complete with torrential downpour, heavy hail, super-strong winds.
So what should have been an easy-breezy rain storm quickly evolved into the two of us having to physically push against the Profanes to keep them from toppling our entire setup over in the bigger tent. The back tent, unfortunately got hit hard, and we could not let go of the panels in the front tent, to hold up the back panels, so everything just toppled to the ground, dumping paintings, office supplies, powercords, panels into the water/hail/mud.

We lost a good bit of work with this “minor” weather event - lots of originals got damaged, the giclées got wet, the panels got cracked and bent, etc..
Nonetheless, after cleaning up with the help of friends, and a LOT of fellow vendors and festival volunteers stopping in to see if we needed help, we managed to get everything sorted back to the walls or the trailer, and we're able to run the show the next day, using the iPhone to process card payments.

We are SO grateful to everybody that checked on us, lent a hand, shared a hug - what a sweet place to be when disaster hits.

Now comes the hard part of getting everything documented and submitted to the insurance to get replacement panels, canvas prints, etc. - it’s a bit of a slog.