By Becky Gillette – The Eureka Springs Farmers’ Market primarily has vendors who provide locally grown fruits and vegetables. One vendor, John Blankenship, produces handcrafted wood items – cutting boards and utensils – crafted from locally grown wood.
Blankenship uses a smorgasbord of native woods for his products that are particularly popular as Christmas gifts because they are artistic and functional.
He uses red and white oak, walnut, cherry, silver and sugar maple, sassafras, Osage orange (when he can find it), hickory, pecan, white ash and beech. “Most of your beech comes out of Newton County,” Blankenship said. “Most of the other wood comes out of Clifty where Wayne Capps has a sawmill.”
The woods have to be dried before used to qualify as Wood Creations by John. He said air-dried takes longer, but is better than kiln-dried for cutting boards. “The kiln pulls out more moisture but, over time, the moisture goes back into the wood,” he said.
He sells wooden spatulas are for $6, and one unique offering is a utensil that can be used to open and close an oven rack. Anyone who has been burned using a hot pad to move an oven rack can appreciate this tool.
His most popular items are the cutting boards made from different wood laminated together and sealed with FDA food safe glue. The boards run from 8”x 8” up to 15”x 20”, with a cost of $20 – $65. They never wear out. But if a customer gets too many knife marks in one and would like it resurfaced, he will happily sand it down for a small fee.
“That way they don’t have to buy a new board,” Blankenship said. “Customers like that. And I like to stay one or two steps ahead of competitors at all times.”
Blankenship was a high performance auto mechanic for 30 years. He turned to woodworking after his joints could not take the punishment of automotive work any more.
Blankenship lives in Springdale, but comes to Eureka Springs because it is a good outlet for his work. He does the Eureka Springs Farmers’ Market Tuesday and Thursdays during the warm season, and Thursdays for the winter. He sells one day a week in Siloam Springs.
He makes and sells nightstands, headboards, furniture and segmented vases.
“It takes three days to make a segmented vase,” Blankenship said. “The designs are just unbelievable. It is time consuming and everything has to match to come out when you finish.”
The Eureka Springs Farmers’ Market, known for being selective, only allows vendors who do quality organic local food or food products, handmade soaps and herbal medicines. Blankenship, who is proud to have recently been elected to the board of directors for the market, said he would like to see other things incorporated into the market to increase the diversity.
“I’m all about what is good for the market,” he said. “The more different things we have at the market, the better it is for the market. But we have limited space.”
He has mixed emotions about the potential to move the market to the new Eureka Springs Highlander Community Center. “It would be like starting over again to getting people used to us being there,” he said. “But I understand moving to the inside. I’m all for that. It gets really cold outside at times.”