By Thursday afternoon, they’ll start pulling into town in force.The advanced units may even arrive Wednesday night.

By noon Friday, the more than 200 retail and food vendors that willprovide the goods for the 36th annual Ole Brook Festival will havedowntown filled up, ready to heat up the deep fryers and set outthe finery to meet a weekend crowd expected to exceed 8,000.

A lot of those vendors are Ole Brook pros and have their plan downpat. But this year, a significant number of them will be new totown.

“We’ve kind of estimated this year maybe one out of every fourvendors is going to be brand new,” said Hampton Sims, chairman ofthe Brookhaven-Lincoln County Chamber of Commerce’s Ole BrookCommittee. “It should be exciting. Folks that have never been tothe festival before will be offering all new items.”

By the numbers, festival organizers are expecting more than 40 ofthe 170 retail booths to be newcomers, adding to the festival a newselection of high-quality, hand-made arts and crafts. The newvendors should bring some shopping flavor to the festival, andtheir presence is a direct result of the chamber’s efforts to cutback on the number of flea market-style vendors and attractmerchants who deal in better quality items.

That goal was accomplished through the vendor referral program, inwhich established Ole Brook vendors were offered a deal on theirrates in exchange for attracting fresh blood to the festival. Simssaid the improvement of the festival applies to food vendors aswell.

“We’ve got the fullest parking lot of commercial food vendors we’veever had, so I anticipate somebody is going to bring somethingunique,” he said.

Festival guests can begin searching out those unique items Fridayat 6 p.m., when the festival officially opens for a three-hournight run. The main event begins Saturday at 8 a.m. and continuesthroughout the day and into the night, closing down around 7p.m.

The ramping up of the festival in 2010 has brought on so manyvendors that festival organizers are pushing against their usualboundaries in downtown Brookhaven. Festival committee member JeffDoremus said new space has been added to the festival map toaccommodate the increased number of vendors.

“That is a great sign. I think we’re going to have a record crowdthis weekend,” he said. “Vendor space is coming down to the limitedsection now – we don’t have a lot of spaces left. We’re actuallyhaving to put some of our non-profit vendors in a new area wehaven’t used before.”

There will be plenty of activities outside of shopping at thefestival, too, including live entertainment Friday night, aMid-South Fair-sanctioned talent show throughout Saturday, a kids’corner with entertainment and jumpers, Art Alley and performancesby students of the Mississippi School of the Arts. The festivalwill close Saturday with Kidz Blitz, an interactive Christian showfor children.

It appears as if festival organizers will have the full cooperationof the weather this year, too. As of Tuesday morning, the WeatherChannel’s 10-day forecast for Brookhaven shows a high of 81 degreesand a cool low of 56 degrees for Friday, with Saturday’stemperatures peaking at 77 degrees and falling to 54 degrees atnight.

The chance of rain for both festival days is 0 percent.

“The festival’s family-centered atmosphere makes it a wonderfulevent for families to come enjoy a break in the weather, shop forsome unique items and enjoy great entertainment, all at no cost,”said chamber Executive Vice President Cliff Brumfield. “Anyonelooking to recapture some of that nostalgic spirit from downtownfestivals and fairs can definitely rekindle that flame at OleBrook.”