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Booths with crafted jewelry, shirts, signs, sauces and kettle corn filled the Natchez Convention Center on Saturday. 

The Very Merry Vendor market featured a wide variety of home made crafts in addition to a snow cone truck outside and a lemonade stand in the lobby. 

For Natchez resident Billy Tanner, his wife and son it is an opportunity to sell their goods for the first time in a year. He said before COVID the family would sell their jewelry, pottery and handmade knives at the farmers market. 

“Today has been better than I expected,” Tanner said. 

The knives are made out of old knife blades reshaped and sharpened. The knife handles are made from deer antlers, he said he started making the knives when he retired three years ago. 

The vendor market brought in people from outside of Adams County and Concordia Parish. The Billingslea family from Jackson brought their homemade sauce called Already Dunn. The sauce is for seafood and meat. Jarod Billingslea said he and his family travel to vendor shows regularly. 

“In the past year we went to so many events despite the virus,” Billingslea said. “At this point we have people inviting us out to these events. So we don’t even know. Sometimes we go back to cities, and sometimes we go to ones we have never been to.” 

The Billingslea family gives out a little bit of their sauce as a free sample. It gets people talking as one customer walked up to the table and told them he was hearing all about their sauce, he went away with a bottle after sampling it. 

Vidalia couple Kenny and Amy DeWitt said they sold four or five storage boxes worth of kettle corn bags at the market. She said the kettle corn is home made in a giant kettle with a wooden paddle. 

The name of the kettle corn is Kenny D, and she said they began selling kettle corn in October 2020. Each weekend they go to baseball tournaments, car shows or antique sales. 

“We love doing it,” Dewitt said. “We still work full time jobs and this is our little hobby.”