Pork Festival closes another successful year

Ash­ley Fritz — Staff

By Jesse Witt

jwitt@registerherald.com

Pork was only one of the many things that brought vis­i­tors to the annual Pre­ble County Pork Fes­ti­val. Those in atten­dance were able to browse the hun­dreds of crafts made by ven­dors across the coun­try, as well as enjoy the per­for­mances of local and regional acts alike.
This year’s Pork Fes­ti­val was ded­i­cated in mem­ory of Paul E. Ray, who recently passed away and was a found­ing mem­ber of the fes­ti­val.
“We lost him Mon­day, he died sud­denly,” said fes­ti­val coor­di­na­tor Nancy Hug­gins. “He and his wife Linda were our exhibitor co-chairmen. We worked really hard, every­one shifted and cov­ered jobs to get every­thing done. There was a ter­rific effort to make this thing hap­pen through that tragedy.”
Sales for this year’s fes­ti­val were fairly close to their norms, accord­ing fes­ti­val offi­cials. While some areas of the fes­ti­val were down, oth­ers num­bers were up from pre­vi­ous years.
“Sat­ur­day we were a lit­tle short in break­fast and smor­gas­bord sales,” said Hug­gins. “Peo­ple were buy­ing the raw pork prod­ucts. We sold out of almost every­thing Sat­ur­day night. There was a dif­fer­ence in how peo­ple pur­chased things this year.”
As far as fes­ti­val ven­dors, “we were full,” said Hug­gins. “We sold all of our booths.”
Thanks to the search efforts lead­ing up to the fes­ti­val, the event fea­tured “85 new ven­dors this year,” said Hug­gins. “This past win­ter we did an Inter­net search and really made an effort to con­tact new ven­dors of all dif­fer­ent medi­ums. I think that was effec­tive. We had 15 dif­fer­ent states rep­re­sented.”
Some of the new states rep­re­sented included Cal­i­for­nia, Ari­zona, Min­nesota, Delaware, Geor­gia, New York and Mis­souri. “We had more than 360 dif­fer­ent ven­dors, with 650 booths avail­able. Some ven­dors require more than one booth,” said Hug­gins.
Enter­tain­ment for this year’s fes­ti­val was sim­i­lar to year’s past. Fes­ti­val goers were able to enjoy the per­for­mances of fes­ti­val reg­u­lars Eric Loy, the McMechan/Reed Magic Show and the a cap­pella group Tonic Sol Fa. The enter­tain­ment tent also fea­tured sev­eral new acts such as a karate demon­stra­tion and per­for­mances by the Knot­work Flutes, and West Alexan­dria sis­ters Adelee and Gen­try.
It wouldn’t quite be a Pork Fes­ti­val with­out its sta­ple, the Pig Races, which were shown through­out the day. Other fes­ti­val attrac­tions included a chain­saw art demon­stra­tion and a pet­ting zoo.
Every­one in Pre­ble County knows of the Pork Fes­ti­val, but many fes­ti­val goers travel from the other nearby cities and coun­ties to par­take in the activ­i­ties.
Steve and Car­rol Malli­cot of Hamil­ton are reg­u­lar Pork Fes­ti­val vis­i­tors. “We come here every year for the atmos­phere and always pur­chase fresh pork. We’ve been here for a cou­ple hours and we’re just get­ting started.”
Pre­ble County natives can’t resist what the fes­ti­val has to offer either and many of them are will­ing to deal with the long lines of the smor­gas­bord and short order to get their share of pork chops.
Karen and Kelly Cas­sidy of Gratis said they’ve been to the fes­ti­val many times. “Our favorite things are the sugar cream pie and of course we love the pork chops. We’ll be buy­ing some of the crafts today and we plan on lis­ten­ing to Tonic Sol Fa later this evening. They’re awe­some.”
Much of the suc­cess of the fes­ti­val is due to the work of the vol­un­teers who par­tic­i­pate every year.
“We love our vol­un­teers, we had at least 1200 vol­un­teers,” said Hug­gins. “We appre­ci­ate every­one for help­ing like they did. They did a great job. Every­one from the Boy Scouts to the var­i­ous FFA chap­ters in the sur­round­ing schools.”
For what appears to be another suc­cess­ful year, fes­ti­val offi­cials want to thank every­one who helped make its suc­cess possible.

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Oct 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.