Maple Fest was a sweet success
It is easy to come up with ideas for events and activities that you would like to see in the community. It is easy to sit around a meeting room table and brainstorm about “what if we did this” or to bring up that cool idea you saw somewhere else and adapting it to do here.
The hard work is in taking those ideas and making them a reality. It starts with building a coalition of individuals and groups who are willing to help with planning and working, not only the day of the event, but the days before and after to set things up and break things down. As anyone who has run an event knows, it is not over until the tables are put away, the last bag of garbage taken to the dumpster and the paperwork filed.
It is even more of a challenge to turn around and do it again, and again, and again and then to pass leadership off to others across the broad coalition to ensure the project keeps remaining fresh and keeps going.
More than a decade ago, a group of people sat around a table at the Taylor County Courthouse throwing out ideas about ways to increase tourism in the county, especially during the down season of early spring when the weather is iffy, at best, and there generally isn’t a great deal going on.
Out of that initial meeting, the rough idea of what would become the Taylor County Lions and Lioness Clubs’ Maple Festival was born. From its start, it worked to draw the county together as a joint project of all the county’s Lions and Lioness clubs. These service club members, who are active and do great work in their individual communities, saw the potential for doing more while working cooperatively on a large event.
Maple Fest 2024 was held last weekend at the Simek Center in Medford. Given last weekend’s wet weather, the wisdom of moving the event under one roof at the Simek Center was made evident.
At any given time throughout the day there were several hundred people at Maple Fest. Some came for the food, others came for chances to win prizes. For others, the crafts and products being sold was a major draw. Many enjoyed the opportunity to get tours of local sugar shacks and seeing the bottling process for locally made maple syrup.
There was a lot to do and a lot to see and a lot of fun to be had for everyone.
The success of the event is due to the vision of its organizers and the hard work of the army of volunteers who gave up their time, not only last weekend, but in the months preceding the event.
To all those involved in Maple Fest, congratulations on a job well done.
