Aubrey prepares for Peanut Festival 2022

By Basil Gist

Staff Writer

Under new management but with otherwise familiar, the annual Peanut Festival returns to Aubrey on Oct. 1.

Taking over for Keep Aubrey Beautiful, the city of Aubrey, led by chairperson Christy Sayer, is taking the reins to make the Peanut Festival happen.

“We are really excited to host it this year,” Sayer said. “We have a lot of new vendors that haven't been here before and an equal number of vendors that have been here in the past and are looking forward to coming back.”

Taking place from 8 a.m.-5 p.m., the festival will look similarly to how it has in the past, with only minor adjustments.

“I have a little list of things we can update or change; we changed a little bit this year but didn’t want to do too much because we just wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly,” Sayer said.

The parade will act as the festival’s first big event, followed by performances from two local dance studios and the Aubrey cheerleaders, as well as music by Tim Urban from 1-2 p.m. and the Keith Mitchell Band from 2:15-4 p.m.

This year’s parade is themed for Aubrey pride and Chaparral spirit, so I have been working with AAYSA to get a lot of youth participation and hopefully high school participation as well,” Sayer said. “We just thought, ‘Red White and Blue, everyone’s got it.’”

To address last year’s transportation issues, the city will provide rides back to the middle school after the parade concludes at Brockett Elementary.

“There are four different prizes; we have trophies for that as well as some other gifts,” Sayer said.

The categories are Mayor’s Choices, School Spirit, Originality and Difficulty.

“I’m hoping we have a lot of participation [in the parade]; we already have several entry forms turned in,” Sayer said.

The festival, in exchange for no fairground games, a response to poor participation last year, will instead feature an expanded kid’s zone and a youth art show.

“We took the back field and decided to expand on the kid’s zone,” Sayer said. “Everything in the kid’s zone this year will be free.

We’re going to have a mechanical bull, a rock wall, face painting, bounce houses and obstacle courses.”

The art show will be split into five different groups between ages ranging all the way to 18 and have first, second and third place prizes.

“Raising Cane’s has donated gift baskets to the winners,” Sayer said.

Among the vendors will be a selection of baked goods to accompany the selection of fair food the food trucks will offer. That variety includes Cajun, BBQ and traditional festival foods.

“We have six food trucks coming, and it is a variety,” Sayer said. “We’ll even have peanuts this year.”