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Date: 9/29/2021
GRANVILLE – For the second straight year, Columbus Day will come and go without a Granville Harvest Fair. This year it isn’t the coronavirus itself that is responsible, but the added work it would take to comply with pandemic safety guidelines.
“It is with sad hearts that we have made the decision to cancel this year’s Harvest Fair due to difficulties getting volunteers; trying to deal with mask restrictions; profitability if [there is a] reduction of indoor spaces; trying to sanitize common areas, buses, sani-cans; low attendance at similar functions and events in the region. As painful as it is, we must consider the health of our community, visitors, and vendors,” read the Sept. 13 announcement at townofgranville.net from the Harvest Fair Committee, which also wrote that it looked forward to seeing everyone in 2022.
Committee member Linda Blakesley said the committee, which is made up of representatives from the library, the Granville Federated Church, the school building, and the Noble & Cooley Drum Factory Museum, met before the announcement. Blakesley said most of the people who put on the fair are elderly, which led to “several issues.” Some of the people were concerned about manning a booth at the library or selling things downstairs.
“The concern was, even though a lot of people had their shots, they didn’t want to do it,” she said.
Other concerns included the possibility that the state could change COVID-19 guidelines immediately before the fair, and that the fair would not having enough volunteers to do extra jobs related to COVID-19 hygiene, such as wiping down all the tables and all the buses, and enforcing masking or distancing restrictions.
“Do you have a 60-year-old woman telling somebody they can’t get on the bus or go into the school without a mask?” Blakesey asked. “We didn’t have enough people to deal with all these things, and did not think we would get the crowds,” she said.
Blakesley said all the unknowns were too much for a volunteer staff already stretched too thin.
“If we had tons of volunteers – one to wipe down the buses, one to take care of the masks – it might have been a little different,” Blakesley said. “The organizations that put this on need help. I’m 71, I take care of the [Town] Green. This year, I have a gentleman to help me. In past years, I did it by myself. There are not enough people.
“A couple of years ago, we were saying we might go down to two days from three days, because we were exhausted,” Blakesley added, saying she was speaking for herself, the library and the church. That year, the Lions Club told the library it would help.
In the weeks since the decision to cancel, several people have said they would have pitched in to help, if only they knew the committee needed it, Blakesley said.
“I will tell you, if we had a lot of people that came forward and would have helped, it would have changed” the decision, she said. “Each group has always had a problem with volunteers,” Blakesley said.
One problem is that many town residents are otherwise occupied during the annual Columbus Day weekend event. Granville has under 1,600 residents, and during the fair, she said, so many people come into town that “it’s the one time of year you can have a tag sale and sell your stuff.” Other people open their yards as parking lots.
Blakesley said by canceling the fair, the library, the church, and the Town Green lose a lot of money. The Town Green raises $2,600 a year for its maintenance and upkeep, and the fair is its only fundraiser besides selling pavers.
“Amongst ourselves, we don’t ask what each organization makes. Each organization makes its own rules, spends what they want to spend, and their profit is their profit,” she said, adding, “I’ve done it for 27 years — I love doing it, but I’m exhausted, and so is everybody else.”
Karen McLaughlin, a volunteer who represents the Federated Church and its interest in the Harvest Fair, is also in charge of renting space in the former Granville Village School to vendors. She says it is a pretty significant fundraiser for the church, representing 10 percent of the annual budget.
“We started renting space out as early as May, and ran out of booth space [in the church] by the middle of June,” McLaughlin said.
She said the school is almost double the size, but there was only a little bit of space left there. Altogether, she had raised $4,000 in booth spaces.
“It’s largely, for the church, a financial issue,” McLaughlin said. “But it is a lot of work for us. For three days, we sell hamburgers and hot dogs.”
She said losing fair revenue will make things harder for the church this year, but it managed to get through 2020 when the fair was canceled, and will get through 2021.
One way the church has been managing the loss of income is by having takeout church suppers. During last winter and early spring, they would make the suppers, people would call in and place an order, and then come by and pick them up. The takeout suppers will start again soon, after stopping for the summer.
“It seems to be very well received. It is largely the same people involved; the group in charge of selling hamburgers and hotdogs do the suppers,” McLaughlin said.
She said she will miss the fair: “It would have been the 39th year. It’s a really nice outdoor event. Just the tradition of it is hard to give up.”
She said the booths, which feature photographers, artists, knitting, “everything you could imagine,” were in demand.
“It’s a great place to go and do your Christmas shopping,” she said.
Asked whether she thought canceling the fair would hurt the crafters, McLaughlin said she would imagine so, as it was canceled with only a month’s notice.
“They build up their inventory in anticipation of these events. There are a lot of different fairs, but we’re not the only ones that canceled,” she said, adding that all the vendors will be refunded. “I imagine it’s been a tough year for crafters,” she said. “People miss this kind of event. It’s just so much fun. Not just the crafters and all that, but the people attending; it was a huge disappointment for people,” she said, while admitting an element of relief when it was canceled.
McLaughlin said certainly the church will be involved in the Harvest Fair next year, but not her, as her house is on the market, and she will be moving away from Granville after being in charge of selling booth space for the church and the school “for years and years.”
“I wish them luck,” she said, adding there is a sort of joke about volunteering in Granville, that goes: “Once you do it once, there are only two ways to stop doing it. You have to die or you have to move.”
“It is a rewarding event – it is fun. It’s so seldom you get a fundraiser that’s such pure fun,” McLaughlin said, quickly adding, “We always think we’re irreplaceable, but somebody always steps up.”