Getting festival site prepared is largely a volunteer affair
When the Apple Festival is in full swing, it’s easy to overlook the time and elbow grease that goes into preparing one of the biggest annual events in north Georgia.
The second festival weekend, Saturday and Sunday Oct. 21-22, brought approximately 27,000 to the Lions Club Fairgrounds, said Natalie Knight, event manager for the Gilmer Chamber. Approximately 57,000 attended in all over the two weekends.
That may not be a record-setting attendance, but it’s pretty close, Knight noted.
“Last year was about 60,000, so this year was a little less. I think the weather (the first weekend) might have had something to do with that. The second weekend this year was actually bigger than the second weekend last year,” she added.
The Ellijay Lions Club and the chamber combine forces to set up, staff and oversee the festival each year. Most of that labor, which starts weeks before the crowds arrive, is provided by volunteers.
“You have to get stuff planned in advance. We start with (some things) near the middle or end of August. As soon as we’re done with the county fair, we start looking at the festival,” said Jim Harding, who, as the club’s Lion Tamer, is in charge of managing the fairgrounds property. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s well worth it in the end.”
The physical tasks, many of which begin about two weeks before the first festival weekend, include weedeating, mowing, assembling spittoons for cigerette butts, putting up canopies and pole tents, marking off the bus line area and more.
“First, we have to do a safety check on the grounds, making sure we have all the potholes filled and that all the electricity is working. We’ve got eight power boxes on the grounds, and all of them are (used for the festival). A lot of the vendors need to use power nowadays,” Harding said. “Mowing and weedeating we have to do during the summer months, anyway, but we also make sure it’s done just before the festival. We also go around and do things like killing ants, filling any holes we might find and just generally prepping the (fairgrounds).”
Mapping and marking the event site layout is among the tasks that are crossed off the chamber’s logistics checklist each year. Each individual vendor booth space has to be marked off and outlined before vendors start arriving. That’s normally done by Knight, who’s assisted in the setup tasks by Tod Page, program coordinator for Isaiah House, and volunteers supplied by that local recovery center.
“With just general setup, you also have things like ATMs, port-a-potties and picnic tables. It’s a lot,” Knight said. “We work with a lot of people in the community, like Isaiah House, who helps with the setup. This year, they also helped with trash collection and did a great job.”
During the festival, members of the Lions Club and chamber staff are also active inside and outside the fairground gates. For the Lions, that includes food and drink sales, taking admission money and managing the shuttle bus line.
“Probably three quarters of the people we get in there are through the shuttle buses,” said Harding. “We have a snack bar (at the Lions Barn) and we do breakfast early, then lunch. We sell food until we sell out. We share the responsibility of taking the money for admission at the entrances with the chamber, and we have four entrances going in there now.”
Jim and wife, Ruthann, have been members of the Lions Club for the past 31 years. The festival was already big when they first started volunteering for it, but the scope of the event and the size of its yearly attendance have continued to grow since then.
“We knew about the Apple Festival before we even moved up here,” he said.
Harding said teamwork is essential for the big event to keep coming together successfully each year.
“Everybody just helps where they’re needed,” he added. “We’ve got people from the chamber, the volunteers from Isaiah House and the Apple Festival board. It’s one of those things where a little bit is done individually, but the big stuff is done all together. It’s gotten so big that neither us, nor the chamber can do it themselves.”
Festival profits after expenses are split between the Lions Club and the chamber. For the Lions, those funds set the course of the year to come, noted Harding.
“This is the biggest moneymaker we have. We get all our money for the rest of the year basically (from the Apple Festival),” he added.
About the opening weekend for this year’s 52nd annual festival, Harding said, “We had lines in the morning getting in and lines in the afternoon trying to get out. The weather was cool enough and not rainy enough to keep people away.”
With an updated event layout, this year’s festivalgoers had more room to mill about. Knight said the layout changes, which included widening aisles between booths, helped improve the flow of foot traffic through the fairgrounds, making the overall experience more enjoyable.
“They stretched the field out and moved a whole row of vendors, which allowed them to divide that space out among four aisles,” added Harding. “There were more than 250 vendors this year (the first weekend), and there was more room for people to move around and get through.”
With another Apple Festival down, the chamber is already looking at planning next year’s event, Knight confirmed.
“This year, we barely had started online presale tickets, but I think that’s going to be (bigger) next year. Everybody at the door who can run credit cards will also have the ability to scan tickets,” she added.