COLUMBUS, Ind. — Two popular and long-established food booth traditions at the Bartholomew County 4-H Fair may be gone for good.
After maintaining a presence at the fair for 70 years, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church is the second organization to announce they will no longer preparing and providing meals and food items at the fairgrounds during this year’s event. The first nonprofit to cease their food operations at the fair was the Lion’s Club, which disbanded last year after 78 years of operation.
According to Bartholomew County Fair Board president Rick Trimpe, the church simply could not find enough volunteers to operate the food outlet during the nine-day fair, which runs from June 23 through July 1 this year.
“This has kind of put the fair in a bind,” Trimpe said. “There are a lot of 4-H kids and their families who come from the show barn to the St. Peter’s building to get breakfast.”
The church was the only food provider at the fair that offered breakfast, lunch and dinner, he said.
For most of the past 70 years, the facility used their own teenagers to supply most of the needed labor, St. Peter’s Executive Director Mike Hinckfoot said. But adults have stepped in over the past few years to fill in gaps left by a decline in youth volunteers, he said.
In a letter Hinckfoot wrote to the St. Peter’s board of directors, he first noted how the lives of high school students have changed.
“Summer vacations are shorter,” Hinckfoot wrote. “Families are busier, and there are longer work requirements asked of them. Overall, our volunteer availability is on the decline. ”
The money raised at the fair by the church was used to finance general mission organizations and youth ministry mission trips, Hinckfoot said.
Since St. Peter’s will no longer be a food vendor, control of the building will automatically revert to the fair board. Trimpe says they hope that another group, church or organization would be willing and capable of taking over the operations during the run of the fair.
Contact information for fair board members can be obtained through the Bartholomew County Purdue Extension office.
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
