Sycamore Farms in Waterloo has been transformed into a winter wonderland for Junkstock’s annual holiday market. Due to flooding earlier this year, it almost didn’t happen.
The farm has been busy with workers preparing for the festival that Mother Nature nearly wiped out in March when the Elkhorn River flooded. Winter Wonderland is a 4-day festival that features a vintage holiday market.
Craig Marshall and crews are building Santa’s Mountain from the Christmas Story movie. It’s complete with a throne for the big man himself and this year there’s even a special spot for Elsa.
Nine months ago things were much less magical. “There’s probably not a day that goes by that I don’t remember that it was devastating,” Marshall told 6 News. Nearly 132 acres of land was covered in water, sand and mud.
“It’s been quite the experience, kind of something you never want to happen,” Marshall says. Since then there’s been a lot of scrubbing, sweeping, cleaning and what Junkstock does best, repurposing.
“There came a point where we had to realize certain things, electrical things like Christmas lights that they needed to be tossed,” Danelle Schlegelmilch, a Junkstock organizer, told 6 news “It was a lot to kind of go through and see what we could clean up and bring back to life.
The mountain has been reconstructed and the Wonderland is ready to go once again. Winter Wonderland at Junkstock runs from Friday through Sunday and then the following weekend as well.
(Photo: courtesy Junkstock)