PICKENS — Two-time Winfield National Banjo Contest champion Charles Wood will headline Hagood Mill’s third Saturday event this weekend.

CHARLES WOOD

Residents are invited to bring lawn chairs and blankets to the mill, located at 138 Hagood Mill Road in Pickens, for a “Banjo Extravaganza.”

The mill will be open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., and music will start at noon, part of the Music in the Mountains 2014 series.

Wood, who won the prestigious Winfield banjo contest in Winfield, Kan., in 1999 and 2006, is a veteran showman. He has appeared on “The Late Show with David Letterman” and “A Prairie Home Companion” with Garrison Keillor.

Wood has toured in Austria and Germany with The Lonesome Road Band and taught at the Munich, Germany, banjo camp in Oct. 2009. He has also starred at many regional and national bluegrass festivals.

There will be lots to see during the event, as Hagood Mill will host a variety of folk life and traditional arts demonstrations.

There will be blacksmithing, bowl-digging, flint-knapping, chair-caning, moonshining, broom-making, basket-making, pottery, quilting, spinning, knitting, weaving, woodcarving, metal-smithing, leather-working and more. The artists will be available to ask questions, and crafts will be available for sale.

The centerpiece of the Hagood Mill historic site is the water-powered 1845 gristmill. It is one of the finest examples of nineteenth century technology in the Upcountry and operates just as it has for the last century-and-a-half. The mill will be running throughout the day. In the old mill, fresh stone-ground corn meal, grits and wheat flour will be available. In addition rye flour, Basmati rice flour, oat flour, oatmeal, popping corn meal, and grits, organic yellow corn meal and grits and buckwheat flour are produced and may be available. Hagood Mill cookbooks and a variety of other mill-related items will also be available.

In addition, food will be available for sale on-site from the GateHouse Restaurant.

The Hagood Mill historic site is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. all year long. The mill operates, rain or shine, for a special festival the third Saturday of every month.

The mill is located just three miles north of Pickens off U.S. Highway 178 or 5.5 miles south of Cherokee Foothills Scenic Highway 11 off U.S. 178.

 “Music in the Mountains 2014” is sponsored by a private benefactor.

For more information, contact the Hagood Mill at (864) 898-2936 or visit www.visitpickenscounty.com/calendar .