Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival

Had a great time at the MD Sheep and wool festival. There was a lot to see and experience, so make sure to wear comfortable clothing and come with enough time to explore. Highly recommend looking at the weather beforehand. The day I went, it ended up hailing, and there was a flash flood, so I got all wet.

An annual favorite for my family. There are farms showing and selling many breeds of sheep, Angora goats, and alpacas. There is music, food, demonstrations of fiber arts, vendors selling fleece, yarn, and every sort of tool to "Make it with wool" (or cotton or silk.) And so much more. The event is big and busy, bring your patience and comfortable shoes. It is run by a small, dedicated group of volunteers. Have fun!

Go early in the day for the best parking. It is a very well attended and lots of walking to see all the merchants and sheep. Music, food, and lots of beautiful yarns!

50th Anniversary came and went at the very nice Howard County Fairgrounds. A long time, well run sheep and fiber show. About 18,000 people (paid attendance) showed up on a stunning sunny Sat and enjoyed what amounted to an County fair with all the trimmings minus a midway and games! Lots of families, lots of exhibits and yes, a LOT of sheep and vendors. As they say, A Good Time was Had by All!

A fun time was had by all at the 2022 Sheep and Wool Festival. I brought my mother who is an avid knitter and met a friend who is a long time fiber crafter. Sunday was really the best day this year. My friend said Saturday was cold and rainy. Many vendors said it was good for thier business as everyone was inside and they did well. We enjoyed lots of shopping and browsing dropping a collective grand or so. We enjoyed lunch at the picnic tables and my sliced Lamb sandwich was particularly good. I highly recommend it for those who love the fiber crafts and kids will enjoy the sheep related activities. My 4th visit. My Mom's 10 visit and my friend has been there even more than that.

Get there early because parking fills up fast. There's a lot to see and do: sheep shows, auctions, vendors with any kind of wool crafting arts and tools you can imagine, sheepdog herding competition, sheep to shawl, demos on how to spin/weave/crochet/knit, and so much more! Bring cash for the food vendors and avoid the 12o'clock rush. Most of the other vendors accept credit, and they're all very friendly! One vendor taught me how to use her loom (I know nothing about weaving), and another was showing a man how to spin wool using a drop spindle. Lots of activities for kids and adults. I highly recommend checking it out!

Have been going yearly since the mid '90s. Easy parking (but on a grassy hill, so some folks might not agree with me). Good mix of animals, vendors, and food.

Such a unique and wonderful place to visit! So much to look at even if you're not planning to buy anything. Plenty of stuff for the kids to have fun too! It was my first time and I'll be attending again next year. Highly recommended.

Very cool experience for the family. It's like another agricultural fair, but in May! There were so many different events and animal petting, it kept the little one engaged. There are just as many food vendors as a county fair. And the cheese / butcher building was great. Lots of cheese samples and price point was affordable. We also liked the market place and bought so many plants for the garden! A must visit if you love county fairs!

I had no idea how big of a deal this festival is. Plan ahead to walk a LOT. Fun for all!

Great festival. ALOT of wool being sold as well as yarn and everything you could imagine to go along with it. A lot of sheep to see and food choices also. There are a lot of vendors at this, it takes a few hour to walk around but is well worth it.

Great festival to attend as I have many times. Wild variety of yarn, knitting, crochet and weaving, wonderful to see other fiber artists and crafters in person. The sheep are amazing. I do not recommend doing business with them. They approached me about a project after hearing what I did for a living. This was shortly after I connected with a member of the festival board for a reason completely unrelated to my career. I am a beginning weaver and was looking for a mentor for grant I wanted to apply for to study folklife. I am, in my professional life, a cookbook author and recipe developer. I attended a couple meetings, we finalized a plan for my project (a lamb cookbook) and then they strung me along and cut me loose after about 2 months of work. They paid me a small fraction of my greatly reduced "friends and family" fee but it was a really strange and disappointing experience. They were not very responsive to any of my updates and then without looping me in or informing it was even a possibility, decided to do a different unrelated project, insulted my industry and abruptly pulled the plug without seeing any of the work they had green-lighted. I had spent a massive amount of time on the work, which they knew but they decided to back out in an incredibly abrupt and disrespectful way. It seemed like a small part of the large organization hired me without looping in the larger group who, when informed of the project, decided they didn't want to back it. Very disorganized and unprofessional. They said it was not a reflection of me and I know it wasn't because they didn't see any of my actual work or let me speak at the meeting I asked for but it was incredibly unprofessional of them to waste so much of my time if they weren't serious about the project. I kept them looped in and they knew I was working on the project for weeks but they never told me they weren't sure if they actually wanted to do it or that other members weren't aware of it's existence. They were super excited about the project when they hired me. It was a true shock to be told that they decided the idea they came up with and hired me for was worthless. Their remarks about were both nonsensical because cookbook sales are literally up over 140% and insulting because I am a cookbook author who makes my living developing recipes and I had found a publisher willing to publish this niche book. I've never worked with any company or org that was this unprofessional in the 18 years I've been in the industry. It was a massive waste of my time; I also missed out on taking on other work this year because this was to be a year long project so I turned down other offers. They ultimately were apologetic about how they handled it but again, they approached me. I only knew them because I was researching an Maryland Folklife grant for weaving and they found out what industry I was in. After they pulled the plug on the cookbook they asked if I wanted to work for free in some other capacity for the festival (and potentially contribute free recipes to an anniversary project??!?!!) instead. It's clear they don't want to pay people for their labor and I got the impression that they felt like I should want to work for free. I was very upfront from day one that while I was giving them a steep discount but that I can't work for free. Recipe development and cookbook writing is incredibly costly (ingredients!) and time consuming. Now I am out of a job, never got the weaving help I actually was looking for when I first met them and can't apply for the grant I wanted. I hesitate posting this because they are friendly, passionate people but I truly can't recommend entering into a business relationship with them and would feel sick if they did this to any other creative. They don't seem to have the experience or capability for that. I think a straightforward vendor arrangement it could work but I would not partner with them with any other project where they would actually have to pay you.

Sheep and wool was something my kids enjoyed every year as they grew up. I'm looking forward to going again when we can. It's always fun and there are so many fibers to admire.

Sheep & Wool festival Fairgrounds Md ..... This is a yearly event thats fun experience of a craft shot & open vender market of sheep.. Lamas.. Goats.. Yarn.. Sewing.. Knitting etc. It's a great weekend outdoors to just eat as well lol... Lamb is the main dish everywhere & enjoy open festival shows.

I would highly recommend! For those that couldn't make it to the 2018 Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, here are my highlights! :) https://youtu.be/K2g2oIkbLHk

The MD Sheep & wool fest happens on the first weekend in May. Most of the times the weather is fabulous. Here's more: The fest is a great coming together of rural America. There is so much livestock, wool, yarn & southeren food here, it's amazing. I always go here to stock up on roving for spinning & the wool yarn I use to weave. There are hundreds of vendors from all over the country selling incredible textiles, yarns, antiques & hand crafted items. You need a whole day to do the festival grounds. The livestock to be seen here are Llamas, Alpacas, sheep, rams, rabbits & more. The food is ice cream, kabobs, hot dogs, chips & sour cream, lemonade, french fries and a great many things southern. One of the barns keeps the prize winning entries of all the shawls & yarn that have been entered. Completely drool worthy. I find it very hard to tear myself away from the winners. It ends with the the sheep dog trials. This is truly an experience. It's loud, colorful, social & an education.

This was an absolutely perfect event for families when we went with an 18 month old and a 4 year old (and again the year after.) I'm definately going back. Lots of animals to pet, sheepdog trials to watch, music, fairground food, shearing demonstrations, storytelling, wool spinning demos - fascinating, and it's outdoors, so the kids can be as loud as they want. Plenty of shade to stay cool, too. Parking and admission are free. Look for the booth that makes fresh potato chips - so yummy! From the website: It's free! It's fun! It's fabulous, and it's always the first full weekend in May! Discover the beauty of sheep, the warmth of wool and the delicious taste of lamb during a fun-filled weekend celebrating all things sheep, from hoof to handwoven. The Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival is sponsored by the Maryland Sheep Breeders Association, Inc., a non-profit organization. The Festival's purpose is to educate the public about sheep and wool. The Festival is organized and conducted by volunteers from the sheep breeding and fiber arts communities.

This was a truly amazing experience. There were great demos, workshops, and amazing vendors. The shepherds feast was worth every penny! This will certainly be a new annual tradition for me!

If you have any love whatsoever of sheep, wool, fleece, fiber, or anything to do with knitting, weaving, or spinning, then this is the festival for you. The 2013 festival marked the 40th year of this sheepy spectacle at the Howard County Fairgrounds. Admission is free (voluntary donation). There are numerous vendors there to fill all of your fiber wants and desires. For those of us who aren't inclined in that direction and are brought along as wingmen, it's always fun to browse around the barns and check out the sheep (and the occasional alpaca or 2). Activities are plentiful throughout the two-day affair, leaving no reason to be bored if you're there. There's plenty of fair food to be had there, not to mention some tasty lamb from a few vendors. For the best food, go in the 4-H building and either purchase a BBQ sandwich from the Boy Scout troop or a leg of lamb sandwich from Greene's Lamb. Yum!

This festival is such a different experience in comparison to Rhinebeck. Similar in size, but the overall vibe is much more laid back. Entry into the festival is free but it's great to support the cause by slipping a few bucks into the donation container. Show up early to get in line for all of the favorites prior to the official festival open time.

The festival was more fun than I expected it to be. The vendors were friendly and very accommodating, though some of the stock was very repetitive between vendors (i.e. the same hat by the same brand in the same colors was sold for slightly different prices by multiple vendors). I would say that about half the vendors sold unique items that they personally make. The food was good for fair food, and the venue was appropriate.

Gets no better than this! I just now started crocheting, and I was overwhelmed at times, but what a fantastic slice of Americana. Such a huge range of people here - from the real old-school farmer types to the hippie-ish eco-folks who are raising alpaca in their yards to the stitch n bitch crowd who are funkifying yarn crafts now. Had a great time! Also some excellent festival food - ribbons chips, which are mandolin'd potato chips, homemade, topped with bad nacho cheese, sour cream, chives, and jalapenos. bad bacon bits, so I'd skip those, but delicious otherwise. The only downside - the diet 'coke' was absolutely not coke - they claimed it, but I have a palate for this.... it was Diet Rite for sure. no way!! got some gorgeous stuff, heard some great names -including Chewy Spaghetti yarn. perfect!

The boy scouts where a amazing help every year and there food is the best at the festival anyone who comes to this festival should help and support the amazing troop 1023

Great free event for kids and adults alike! I am a knitter, so I love seeing the variety of yarns for sale (I have a hard time not spending too much money here!). My son loves seeing the sheep and goats. And my husband loves the food - especially the typical fair food and the lamb burgers!