“This is one of those festivals that lasts two days, but for me lasts more like ten months,” MacDonald said.
The Palouse native MacDonald has planned two previous festivals, both of which she said enter planning phases the October following the previous festival.
MacDonald’s planning efforts are not done alone. MacDonald heads a committee of 15 to 20 committee members each with specific responsibilities, including a cook-off chair, microbrewery chair and a Little Lentil King and Queen coordinator.
Previous to her appointment to the position, she said her serving on the US Dry Pea and Lentil Council in Moscow, paired with her experience as a fifth generation farmer and holder of leadership positions, helped prepare her for her current role.
Planning for MacDonald includes what she calls her near “three-inch-thick to-do list” and what she describes as “a lot of 18 hour days.”
For each of the two festivals she has organized, she said the most challenging aspects of the job come from recruiting enough volunteers, which she said often number an estimated 300 people.
MacDonald said the festival’s history shows how much it has changed.
The first festival was in 1989 and was originally held every two months until the festival committee decided a change was needed due to low turnouts, MacDonald said.
“It was great but really small and really mediocre,” MacDonald said. “Then we decided to put all our energy into one festival every year,” she said of the festival committee.
MacDonald said the idea of showcasing the lentil came from careful consideration of local agriculture and ultimately deciding on a crop not typically highlighted by a community.
“Nobody celebrates lentils because they don’t know what they are,” she said.
MacDonald said the uniqueness of creating a festival around lentils helped build more interest in it due to the curiosity it raises.
With an estimated 98 percent of lentils grown in the United States being produced in Whitman County, Pullman is living up to its reputation as the lentil capital of the country.
Pullman isn’t the only city showcasing crops as the iconic symbols of their community festivals, though.
Every year during the last full weekend in July, people flock to Gilroy, California for the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival. The City of Opelousas, Louisiana hosts the Yambilee Festival in honor of the local sweet potato crops. And in Fairborn, Ohio, crowds gather for corn shucking at the Sweet Corn Festival.
Events like these are part of an even larger industry, as the International Festivals & Events Association, or IFEA, notes on their website.
The IFEA website states that on a global scale, four to five million regular and re-occurring events and festivals are held each year, a number the site also claims contributes to a trillion dollar economic impact in US currency on the world market.
MacDonald, who attended IFEA’s 53rd annual international festival convention last year in Boise, Idaho, said festival organizers are constantly looking to find new ways of making their events better through improved sponsorship strategies, event ideas and also how to make festivals more environmentally sound.
As with other festival directors, developing a more “green” festival is something MacDonald said the Nation Lentil Festival Committee is working toward.
An estimated 20,000 to 25,000 people attend the National Lentil Festival each year, numbers MacDonald said were calculated based on average pounds of garbage generated per one attendee in the past.
With a push to become more recycle-oriented, the committee no longer uses the method of calculating attendees because of lower garbage generation, but instead looks to calculations made based on food consumption.
MacDonald said the overall benefits to the community are a high priority.
With a budget of about $50,000 granted by the City of Pullman on top of additional money brought in through sponsoring, the festival committee works to keep a sustainable event with low costs to participants paying for participation fees in the sports activities offered, MacDonald said.
MacDonald said most years the event breaks even in revenue, but sometimes is under and rarely slightly over the initial costs at the end of the event.
Despite these outcomes, community members remain confident in the overall benefits of the festival.
Monique Slipher, an employee at Bruised Books in Pullman, said she has worked during the festival in her 15 years of employment at different Main Street and nearby businesses and has seen a positive effect on the local economy.
“It draws a lot of people to town,” she said. “It’s probably the biggest thing in Pullman for the year,” she added.
Gunnar Nordquist, a WSU student who has attended the festival in previous years, said the festival provides an opportunity for the community to come together.
“It defines Pullman,” he added.
For now, MacDonald is continuing her campaign to build her sponsorship base and her festival organizing.
“For Pullman it’s a sense of pride,” she said. “Pullman is the home of WSU and the National Lentil Festival,” she added.
# # #
No comments:
Post a Comment