Well, what do Highland Dance Clans,
Gel sting and 100 corgis have in common?
Well, you can find all that
and more at the Celine Celtic
Festival tonight and tomorrow.
Catherine Downey joins us now.
This is the 26th year for this.
Yeah. Wow. I, you know what exactly
is happening at the festival? A
lot. Yeah. We have so much stuff
that it's hard to list it all.
But it has grown so much that we
actually move locations this year so
that we have more room because we have,
like, live competition.
We have music, we have food.
We have tons of bagpipes.
We've got, you know, textile demonstrations.
We've got kids activities and
now we've got corgi races.
We've got. I mean,
it's just we have so much stuff that,
yeah, it's hard to list at all. Can
you imagine how that's going to look?
Those little corgis running?
I am so excited.
That's going to be adorable,
Yes, because that's something
that we've never done before.
And so it's kind of fun to think about.
Having over 100 corgis in
one place at the same time,
they're not all going to race at once,
They're going to race in heat.
But we're still going to have adorable,
really, really cute.
So talk a little bit about the history
of this festival and you know how
it came to be in your community.
So it started as a way to
celebrate our relationship with
our sister city of Brecon, Wales.
And so the mayor at the time thought,
hey, let's throw a rodeo.
And his wife said,
why don't we celebrate their culture instead?
And so then the Celtic festival
was born and it was really small,
100 people or so the first year and
then over the course of 26 years,
like I said, it's grown so much that
we had to move to a different location.
And we get thousands of people
who come out every year.
So, yeah, wow,
thousands of people.
So it gets started tonight.
This evening, right?
Yes, 5:00, o'clock gates open.
And what can we expect tonight?
And you know, in comparison to tomorrow,
tonight is we used to call it pub night.
We kind of call it Party
in the Park pub night.
Lots of different names.
It is mostly focused around the music aspect.
We're going to have bands performing
tonight and we're going to have
lots of really good food.
We have merchants selling. And then.
And tomorrow is when we start getting
more into like all the bagpipes,
music workshops and you know all
of the the bigger events,
kids activities, things like that.
And you have different prices depending
on ages for folks who want to come in.
And and I saw the cookies here,
we we talked about them earlier
at the beginning of the show.
These are adorable.
Were these just done to help
promote the event or I was going
to say tell me who these were made
by the Baker's Nook and Celine.
So look at that Corgi. But is it?
Corgi But that's like, the what?
I don't know why it
would like that's the funniest part
about a corgi, but they're just
they're just so adorable.
They're cute. Little adorable.
Yeah. What do you love so
much about this festival?
I love that it brings so many
different people together.
I mean, we have people of all ages
who come out and we really try to make
sure there's something for everyone.
This year we are,
we are 100% wheelchair accessible and
we have a lot of dementia friendly
things kind of happening and we even
have Braille schedules and maps of the event.
So we really try to encourage
everybody to come out,
whether you're Celtic or not.
And so yeah,
so it's fun to be able to have
so many different people come
together and just have a big party
and learn about. Culture to learn
how the things said that they didn't
know and on the back of this I'm
looking at this is a straw henge.
Straw henge yeah tell me about this. So
Jim Peters who is an engineer he
had this idea for years and as you
can see this is all hands drawn his
his design there and it is lined up
perfectly so that it actually would
would be on the summer solstice in
the right spot And so our local
farmer came and helped and we put
it all together in two days and.
He lent us the straw.
So we've got a whole,
it's a half size replica of straw hen,
1/2 size. OK, So will that be
something that people can see? Oh yeah.
You can walk inside of it.
You can stand and look at where
the Heel Stone is and see
where the solstice would hit.
And yeah, so it's really cool.
I've been in there a lot and it's so
cool to look around and think, you know.
Take some pictures. Oh, yeah, Because.
Because you got to have pictures.
Do you encourage people to wear kilts? Yes.
We always encourage people to wear kilts.
People can come in costume.
We actually have storm troopers and
kilts who come out from the Five O 1st.
And so we have a lot of different
people who dress up in different ways.
But yeah, we love it when
people come out and kilts. So
fun, so fun. OK, so remind us of
when and where this is happening. It
is happening at the Washtenaw Farm
Council grounds in Saline, MI tonight.
Gates open at 5:00 and then tomorrow
they open at 10:00 AM and I'll.
Be going all day tomorrow. Very
good. So head on the North and.
Yeah, and take it in.
Thank you so much for coming today.
Thank you so much for
having lots of fun. Yeah.