HemlockFest looks for new local venue

By Keith Murden
The Nugget

The Lumpkin Coalition, a non-profit, 501(c3) charitable organization, is asking for the community’s help in locating a suitable local venue for its biggest annual fundraising event of the year: the HemlockFest charity music festival.
HemlockFest is a three-day annual concert event that occurs during the first weekend of November. Until last year the festival was exclusively held in Lumpkin County, but the lack of an eligible location forced organizers to shift the event to another Georgia community in 2022.
Now Lumpkin Coalition Chairman Forest Hilyer is appealing to the residents of Dahlonega to help bring the popular festival back home.
“The Lumpkin Coalition would love to bring HemlockFest back home to Lumpkin County, where it has been for 17 of its 18 years in production,” Hilyer told The Nugget.
Hilyer explained that HemlockFest helps raise money to address environmental issues that directly affect the quality of life for North Georgians.
“We aim to provide a really fun way to support causes that directly affect our community like saving hemlock trees, restoring American chestnut trees, keeping our rivers clean and inspiring generations to come to do the same. Hemlocks are the heart of Appalachia, and Lumpkin County is the heart of North Georgia,” Hilyer said.
Hilyer also cited the extensive promotional efforts associated with the festival as a great opportunity to increase visibility for Dahlonega and its local businesses.
“It literally puts Dahlonega on the map for many who have never heard of it. People fly in from as far away as Florida, Texas, California and Maine to attend as patrons or volunteers,” Hilyer stated.

FOREST PHILANTHROPY

Lumpkin Coalition member Gina Tripi sat down recently with The Nugget to discuss the purpose and history of HemlockFest.
Tripi began by noting that the Lumpkin Coalition is “a 100 percent volunteer organization; even when we have our festivals, there’s no paid staff.”
Tripi said that the annual HemlockFest is the Coalition’s biggest fundraiser.  Proceeds are used to restore local populations of both the hemlock tree and the American chestnut tree, two native species which have been decimated by a combination of non-native insects and diseases from Asia.
“The woolly adelgid is the bug that has harmed the hemlocks. The hemlocks are a keystone species … so they’re very important to the life of our forests,” Tripi explained.
The American chestnut, another keystone species that used to dominate forests across the eastern United States, is facing an existential threat from two diseases: chestnut blight and root rot.
Tripi said that this year the Lumpkin Coalition was able to donate approximately $20,000 toward those causes this year.
One of the specific beneficiaries is a beetle lab program operated by the University of Georgia, the University of North Georgia and Young Harris College.
“We used the funds this year to purchase all the predator (good) beetles requested by the labs at UNG, UGA and YHC. They use these for breeding in the labs as well as in the wild, and release them to feed on the wooly adelgids in an effort to create a predator-prey balance as a biological remedy to the issue,” Hilyer said of the group’s efforts to save the hemlock tree.
But the Lumpkin Coalition is not just about helping the hemlocks; they are also invested in fighting the dual diseases that have ravaged the American chestnut tree, as well.
“We also gave a check for $6,000 to the Georgia chapter of the American Chestnut Society to help with their research and efforts to restore the trees back into our ecosystem,” Hilyer added.

HEMLOCK HISTORY

There have been 17 total HemlockFests so far. The festival got its start as a one-day event on October 1, 2005, at Three Sisters Vineyards. The following year, HemlockFest expanded to a three-day festival, moved to the first weekend in November and changed venues to Starbridge Sanctuary on Hwy. 52, which served as HemlockFest’s home for 14 consecutive years, ending in 2019.
The COVID pandemic resulted in a virtual event in 2020, and no event was held in 2021. In 2022 the festival returned, but without the benefit of the Starbridge partnership. The location was moved to Cherokee Farms in LaFayette, Ga, because the Lumpkin Coalition could not find a suitable venue inside Lumpkin County.
Tripi said the LaFayette arrangement, while moderately successful, put a significant strain on both festival organizers and volunteers.
“Attendance wasn’t bad,” Tripi said. “We still ended up with 1,000 people total, because we were able to pull from Chattanooga [and] we were able to still market the festival and draw music over from that community … the thing we probably struggled with the most is being so far away from everybody’s base.”
Lumpkin County also offers plenty of overnight accommodations for single-day ticket holders, as well as guests who might not want to participate in the overnight camping component of the festival.
“We would have Saturday people who would … come to Dahlonega and visit the restaurants and stay in the hotels. If they didn’t want to camp, if they wanted to stay in a nicer place, Dahlonega offers all of that here in our community … in LaFayette, you were either camping or going home,” Tripi said.

SEARCHING FOR A SITE

Tripi said Cherokee Farms is no longer a viable option for this year’s festival, as the property was sold to new owners. As a result, the Lumpkin Coalition is still searching for a suitable venue for the 2023 HemlockFest, and Dahlonega is the preferred option.
Tripi listed some of the advantages of cultivating a local partnership: “The money that we spend primarily stays here in Lumpkin County. It’s a music community. The volunteer base is here,” she said.
Tripi indicated that they have already had two prospective sites for this Fall come to their attention, but they are both located out of the county.
“If we could secure something soon, within a month or so, we could conceivably make the shift to Lumpkin County. If something comes up and it works for this year we can make the shift, otherwise we can get it set up for the following year. But we’re really looking for some place that can be a [permanent] home,” Tripi indicated.
The first hurdle that a new HemlockFest site in Dahlonega would need to overcome is crowd capacity requirements.
“I think there was one year where we really had a lot of attendance, close to the 3,000 mark, which is unusual. We average between 1,000 and 1,500 people, including musicians and vendors,” Tripi said.
Judging from past experience, Tripi said that a minimum of 40 acres would likely be needed in order to successfully host the event.
“Starbridge was a little tight,” Tripi recalled. “I think they had 40 acres. But we didn’t have enough parking. So it’s just a matter of ‘Do they have enough parking, camping and venue space?’”
Historically, the Lumpkin Coalition brings its volunteers onto the site a week in advance to begin setting up, but Tripi said that an area with existing infrastructure would certainly be welcome.
“We’re looking for something that doesn’t quite need so much work. Our volunteer base has a lot of retirees who are older, and they don’t want to spend a whole week chopping wood and setting up campsites and things like that,” Tripi said.
Other basic features the group is looking for in a potential Lumpkin site are electricity and running water.
“Also, it’s a music festival. There are beer and wine sales, so the owner would have to be comfortable with that. We always go through the process of getting the license and everything. We know how to run a festival. But landowners have to be comfortable with festival goers being on their property,” Tripi explained.
She added that HemlockFest is an eco-friendy, pack-in and pack-out festival, so a potential host would not have to worry about an extensive clean-up operation after the event.
“We are a very environmentally conscious community, so that plays true in all of our practices,” Tripi said.

COALITION CONTACT

Tripi said that the Coalition typically works out some form of compensation for the property owner, whether it is a portion of ticket sales or simply the addition of permanent improvements to the property.
“Last year’s landowner said they wanted a dollar per ticket. We also do a landowner partnership, and we had that relationship with Starbridge. We built a stage. We built infrastructure. There were campsites that were developed. There were beach spaces that were cleaned up,” Tripi said.
Hilyer stressed that HemlockFest is unique among Dahlonega’s annual festivals, because it offers “experts in various environmental fields, lots of learning opportunities, a community of families and friends, local craft and food vendors, lots of live music and fires to keep warm by while visiting for the day or camping over night.”
“Please help us keep this fundraiser alive by helping us find a new home, here at home,” Hilyer concluded.
Any local property owner who would like to inquire about hosting HemlockFest 2023 can e-mail the Lumpkin Coalition directly at lumpkincoalitioninfo@gmail.com.