The Festive Flock in Grand Ridge provides Christmas goods, holiday spirit

One would be hard pressed to find someone that loves Christmas more than Sarah Over, and she and her family want everyone else to enjoy it as much as they do.

Over, who for the last few years has been building her own Christmas store that is open for just a short time but is big on holiday spirit, will be opening The Festive Flock store on Black Friday, Nov. 29, located at 1656 N. 21st Road, in Grand Ridge. Created in one of the machine sheds on the Overs farm, it is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, beginning Black Friday.

The venue boasts wreaths, grave blankets and 100 of pre-cut balsam fir trees that the family travels to Wisconsin each year to purchase. To give customers the feel of cutting their own tree on site, the firs will be put on stakes to give it a shopping-in-a-live-grove experience.

In addition to the holiday plant life, more than a dozen of Over’s neighbors create and deliver to her not only a variety of crafts, but also baked goods, breads and cookies all available for sale.

“It’s really short-lived each year,” said Sarah Over, who operates the store with her husband, Chris, and 1-year-old son, Maverick. “I think last year we were only open for six or seven days before we sold out of everything, so if you want to experience this, don’t wait.

“I love Christmas and I’ve always wanted to grow Christmas trees. We are farmers, but we have not found a good spot to grow them here, so this is filling a big holiday void for me, and based on the response, for a lot of other people, too.”

The concept for The Festive Flock, so named for the Southdown sheep the Overs raise, came easily.

In 2020, during the COVID pandemic, the Grand Ridge Community Fest that Sarah is involved in was not able to host its annual Christmas party with Santa Claus, because of a ban on large public gatherings.

“I told Chris that just because we couldn’t have Santa in Grand Ridge, that didn’t mean we couldn’t have Santa at our own house,” she said.

So the Overs cleaned out one of the machine sheds and turned it into a Christmas drive-thru, basically a highly-decorated “Winter Wonderland,” complete with hot chocolate for everyone, a “Polar Express” section for kids and appearances by the Grand Ridge Fire Department and trucks from Scott Miller Trucking in Streator.

“It took a while to set up, but I thought if one car comes, it will be a success,” Sarah said, “but we had 302 cars come through and over 1,000 people. People were sitting in their cars in line for over an hour.

“Now that the world is back to semi-normal shape, we decided to try to do something for people to come to, on foot, a place with hours and everything Christmas, and that’s how all this started … We’ve run under the radar a bit since then because I was hesitant to have it grow too big, too fast because it was so new to us. Now it’s growing bigger and better every year.”

In addition to the trees and other homemade goods, there will be porch containers created by clients of Streator Unlimited, and there will be painting classes available. For more information, see The Festive Flock page on Facebook.

“It’s really kinda taken off,” Sarah said. “Yes, it’s a good thing that people buy things – every year we increase the number of trees we have and increased the amount of things we have for sale and every year we’ve sold out very quickly – but we also want this to be an experience. There are lots of antiques around so that it looks like a very vintage Christmas.

“One lady said last year, ‘I don’t really need to buy anything, I just come here for the feeling of Christmas.’ That’s good enough for me.”