10% of the ticket proceeds from the long weekend will be donated the Greater lakes Region Children's Auction.
Laconia Daily Sun Article December 16, 2024 Full article here.
HOLDERNESS — Deep in the woods northwest of Meredith, two well-known local businesses combined their talents to create a winter spectacle that’s sure to draw regional intrigue and create holiday memories to last a lifetime.
At Wolfsburg Farm, where the snow is a foot deep in places, Ryan Brown and Emily Morgan of New Spectrum Lighting spent weeks creating a holiday lighting display with Ashley and Andrew Mutty, event managers at the farm, which spans a long stretch of woods and captures the essence of the season.
The sprawling and idyllic 120-acre farm, set atop rolling hills shrouded by recent snowfall, is tucked away along East Holderness Road, just off Route 3. The pastoral landscape is particularly festive in the winter, but the lighting display which opened on Friday evening effectively emphasizes its beauty.
"Lights on Squam" will run through Valentine’s Day weekend and provides an option for outdoor fun during a time when some may feel cooped up with cabin fever. The long walkway, sprinkled with wood chips to ensure safe walkability, is completely saturated with festive holiday lighting and takes visitors deep into the forest and back around a large wooden barn near the entrance to the property.
Inside the barn, Michael Spiezio — also known as DJ Spiezio — spent Friday evening spinning records as visitors to the display came to warm up on a frigid evening. Ashley Mutty was busy serving hot chocolate and other refreshments to visitors around the time of first opening and her husband Andrew took over later in the evening.
It took Brown, Morgan and a couple of others more than 10, 16-hour days to ensure the display was up to par with the standards they set for themselves. This isn’t their first major endeavor — New Spectrum Lighting is the company behind other notable lighting displays including the Christmas trees in downtown Laconia and the web of lights that now hang permanently above Canal Street.
Brown was busy putting the finishing touches on the display, ensuring the sound system which plays classic Christmas tunes was in working order on Friday afternoon. Severe winter weather, which brought lots of snow and rain to the Lakes Region last week, complicated matters and caused the grand opening to delay for one day. But a hard freeze the night before — temperatures reached 16 degrees Fahrenheit in and around Laconia — hardened the ground and made opening night a success.
“It’s not really a job, it’s more of a lifestyle,” Brown said, as Brenda Lee’s 1958 hit “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” sounded off in the background. “Living out here in the woods in the freezing cold all week.”
With any luck, once the display was set, Brown didn’t expect much more work to be required aside from occasional upkeep. There’s a lot to keep up, with various lighting designs in blues, purples and whites in place around and above the walking trail.
The two parties timed the display for the darkest point in the year, which is fast approaching. On Friday, the trail was mostly pitch-black shortly before 5 p.m.
At the entrance to the farm, sat a blue and white airstream adorned with Christmas lights. That’s the ticket booth, but organizers hope visitors will take advantage of purchasing tickets online ahead of time. It makes the event flow more smoothly for everybody involved.
They’ve been successful at facilitating weddings on the property and hope to offer other fun and memorable events throughout the year, such as the lighting display.
“I’m hoping people embrace it,” Brown said Friday night. So far, it looks like people have.
“It was awesome,” Andrew said Monday morning. “I’m kind of speechless — just the right amount of time for a test weekend.”
Andrew said neither he and Ashley nor New Spectrum Lighting have done this type of project before, so the opening weekend provided great feedback regarding tech and logistics. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 400 people showed up, and they expect the upcoming weekend to be even busier.
“It’s important that we stress to people the importance of pre-ticket sales,” Andrew said, noting it helps he and the other organizers better manage traffic.
About 80 people attended Lights on Squam on opening night.
“The feedback was really good,” he said. A lot of couples came and a good number of people in their 50s or older, which Andrew hopes will translate into recommendations to their friends and family members to come out and see the display for themselves. “That demographic ends up being kind of like the leaders of the pack.”
The timing for the event is good, Andrew thinks, because there isn’t a lot to do outdoors during the cold winter months outside of snow sports. For people who aren’t athletes or who, alternatively, just want something else to do, the light walk may be just the ticket.
“A lot of people feel trapped inside their house,” he said.
It’s still early, but organizers are already thinking of ways they may be able to expand the event. They’ve discussed adding a tubing hill for children, who’ve been enjoying roasting marshmallows for s'mores by the fire pit. Adults are able to enjoy a warming beverage inside the barn, where beer, hot chocolate, wine, water, candles, hats, gloves and other items are also available for purchase.
“It was perfect, people loved the assortment of the beverages available,” he said. “A lot of people were coming in and sitting down.”
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