Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
They ran out of cheese, beer, pie, ice cream and hot dogs. They had 15 hamburger patties left.
The first Farmington Harvest Festival entered the night Saturday with one of the event’s 26 volunteers driving up to Tekoa for 100 hot dogs and cases of beer from C & D’s. The five kegs at the beer garden were dry.
“Our whole goal for a first annual was to break even,” said Chairman Frank Triplett. “We were expecting around 200 people and we’re guessing there was about 400.”
It all added up to a $3,500 donation to the town of Farmington’s parks.
As evening fell, after the band The Intentions finished their set, a man approached Triplett and asked for five minutes on the microphone.
Triplett obliged, and Mark Doneen of Richmond Beach, Wash., who was raised in Farmington, stood on stage to present a check for $500, and challenged his friends and family to do the same.
Then the Fabulous Kingpins began the festival’s closing music set and checks started being handed to Triplett. Two matching pledges of $500 were donated, along with a couple of $300, a $200, and a $100.
At the beer garden, the tip jars added money too, with all proceeds going to the cause. One jar was marked for John Deere, the other for Case. John Deere won the beer poll by $2, although the word on the street was that someone put a $5 bill in the John Deere jar just as the two were being collected.
“I couldn’t have been happier with the way it turned out,” said Mark Hellinger, who donated funds for the series of musical groups who performed during the day. Hellinger also played bass with The Intentions.
“The weather was perfect, the turnout was great and the ambulance didn’t move all night. My only regret was that we didn’t start this years ago,” Hellinger said.
Merchandise sales totaled $2,000 for festival T shirts, which sold for $12 and sweatshirts which sold for $30.
The day began with a kids’ fun run and continued through the Tube-A-Palooza, where kids pushed colorful, painted tire inner tubes down the Seventh-Day Adventist church hill. In the afternoon, there was a Car and Motorcycle Show and Shine along with more music and kids’ activities.
Triplett indicated that some of the proceeds from the first Farmington Harvest Fest will be kept as seed money for next year.
“Canopies, coolers, burners, everything was borrowed,” Triplett said.
As for those 15 leftover hamburgers, Jim Boland of Hog Heaven Sausageworks brought double the amount organizers thought they’d need in his freezer truck.
While the truck stored the burgers and bratwurst, Boland had no reason to worry – most notably while on stage with Hellinger playing guitar for The Intentions.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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