Orange County

Famous Harvest Fest to Make OC Debut

The 47-year-old, on-the-road Harvest Festival Original Art & Craft Show will call upon Costa Mesa for the first time ever.

What to Know

  • OC Fair & Event Center
  • Sept. 20-22, 2019
  • $9 general admission

You likely know someone who is completely and totally and 100% done with holiday shopping.

They were done by the Fourth of July. Heck, they were likely done before spring arrived.

And if you know the sort of person that fully completes their must-buy list on the 26th of December, when all of the sales are at their most sale-iest, then you know what it is to feel a bit of (friendly) competitive pressure.

But the pressure dissipates when the Harvest Festival Original Art & Craft Show rolls into town, or somewhere near the town where you live. 

This is the venerable craft fair that goes on the road every fall, with stops in Ventura and Pomona and places around the Bay Area, too.

It always lands in a structure that's quite capacious, which makes sense, as dozens and dozens of vendors purveying in handmade scarves and gem-lovely jewelry and various nut butters and loaves of pumpkin bread and watercolor paintings join the shop-around scene.

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Is it autumnal, in the sense that you can find goods covered in leaf motifs and apples and such? It is, but there are just as many items, if not more, that speak to Christmastime.

Making it an ideal first stop for those of us, which is most of all of us, who need to get a jump on stocking stuffers.

And if Orange County is your home base, be full of fa, la, and la, for the festival will be making its debut at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa from Sept. 20-22, 2019.

The event has long kept to a roster of cities that it calls upon, each and every year, so a fresh addition to its itinerary is great news for harvest lovers looking to stock a pantry, a gift closet, or maybe their own bureau (clothing items tend to be one-of-a-kind-y and mighty cute).

There are other harvest festivals in the world, of course, and they can have various flavors.

There are bob-for-apple bashes and pumpkin carving conventions and places to pet goats.

The Harvest Festival, though? It's very much about shopping for art and clothes and things to eat, with a September-through-December style vibe.

OC harvestians, you know longer need to roam further afield to visit this gem. It's headed for you, or at least Costa Mesa, which isn't too far from you, over the penultimate weekend of September 2019.

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