Marion County Country Ham Days

From Marion County Country Ham Days Website:

The last full weekend in September celebrates the Marion County Country Ham Days, a "Kentucky Top-Ten Event", hosted by the Marion County Chamber of Commerce along with its business partners and volunteers. The festival welcomes over 50,000 visitors and acts as an agent for community empowerment.

The event began nearly 40 years ago, and started with a mere six hams. Today, Ham Days serves over 6,000 pounds of country ham with over 1,000 of Marion County volunteers. At Ham Days, volunteers cook a country ham breakfast that is served to visitors under the Dunn Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Breakfast Tent. For lunch or dinner, you can grab some beans and cornbread, a pork sandwich or a brat from the Knights of Columbus or steak from The Cattlemens Association. An ice cream, fried twinkie, gyro, funnel cake or the best hot dog in town are also served from our many food vendors.

Musical groups are often hammin it up in every corner of the Ham Days festival. On Saturday, following the parade a Karaoke Contest along with Elvis Impersonator, Caleb Brown, will take place on the Kentucky Cooperage, Makers Mark Main Stage. On Sunday morning the Kentucky Cooperage, Makers Mark Main Stage will be blessed with Marion County's own The Honeysuckle Stringband followed by No Deceit for the duration of the festival. John Mikkiah Thompson from Shelbyville, Indiana is an 18 year old autistic child that didn't speak until the age of 8. At the age of 5, his father introduced him to music and at the age of 6 he began to mimic the sounds he would hear. John has taught himself to play the organ, violin, guitar, drums & harp. By the time he was 8, he could listen to a song and play it back the same day! At the age of 18 he now sings each weekend at a church or local venue sharing his gift of music & song, please join us in listening to some wonderful gospel music on Sunday morning, 8:30am-10:00am.