Garden Festival 2012

Garden Festival 2012 is scheduled for Saturday, August 25 from 9 am - 3 pm at the Rock County Fairgrounds. Our theme is "Grow It, Eat It", thanks for the suggestion, Robin. This move in location is a prime opportunity for us to grow our event, the problem is we need more help in our planning and organizing, as well as help planting, growing, maintaining and harvesting vegetables for the event. This is the perfect time to learn and practice the skills we will need to create a successful 2013 State Conference.
Opportunities to assist include:
Marketing-posters, news releases, advertising, etc
Sponsors- finding sponsor money & coordinating with the t-shirt volunteer
T-shirts-work with supplier & team on sponsor t-shirts
Vendors-recruit vendors-coordinate the day of event
Parking-coordinate the parking area and volunteers
Children's Activities- create & coordinate educational activities and volunteers
Supply Accquisition-purchase and transport supplies (water,soda,paper supplies,etc)
Demonstrations/Talks-recruit and coordinate educational ops (hands on would be fun)
Giveaway Basket-acquire donations and assemble basket
Donations&Prizes- we usually get popcorn from Elmer, apples from TenEyck's, prizes for pie & art contest, ribbons & certificates, and items for giveaway basket
Garden Art Contest-the former Scarecrow contest has been broadened out to include all types of garden art using recycled products
Vegetables-This is an area we are open to lots of new opportunities. We were hoping members would choose a collection to grow at home for the event. Then present a complete educational display to include a sample(s) of the individual veggies, labels, other educational info that could include growing info, pest & disease info, nutritional info, tastings, fun stuff (like gourd decorating, ristra making, pepper grilling, cucumber salsa, veggie potato heads, etc). You could also work in conjunction with others, with each of you choosing a component, for example, someone could grow the collection while others present the educational info.
If you have an interest in any of these opportunites, mark your calender for our next Garden Festival meeting to be held on Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 6 pm, location to be announced. Please get in touch with Deb Grams at dbgrms521@att.net or 608-755-0946 if you would like to participate in any capacity or offer ideas.