Our First Community Event!
Last weekend we held our very first event at the barn!
I planned a vendors day event hoping to engage local artisans and farmers, crafter's and entrepreneurs alike to come showcase their stuff and help raise some donations for a local church who goes above and beyond to provide for our new community.
As my luck would have it, the night before the event as I sent out confirmation messages to all the vendors to ensure a smooth set up following day, 3 backed out due to family emergencies or illnesses. My heart sunk. I thought for sure this would be a total flop and I'd have to fight through discouragement and try to come up with other ideas to engage our community.
I was pleasantly surprised though. The first day was very slow going. The weather was horrible, it was frigid and there was a constant misting rain blowing throughout the barn. These weather factors not only froze us, but ruined almost all the signage I had on the main roads directing people to the barn.
Then Saturday rolled around, I was skeptical, had messaged the new vendors and told them that friday was pretty rough and I was feeling scared and stressed that no one was going to show up. I was so wrong, I luckily picked a few vendors with a knack for advertising and products that spoke for themselves...our barn was packed with shoppers all day long Saturday! I was so elated to have made some collections for the Church and met a lot of my new neighbors.
Sunday was a little slow going but we still did pretty good for only having four vendors and barely any signage.
What a learning experience that was! I am still filled with inspiration and drive to continue building my humble farm into the event center of my dreams, but I learned that it will be an exhausting job to get there, and continue to grow, but its one that will benefit this area so greatly I cant leave it undone.
We hope to figure out a solution to providing heat to the top half of the barn for events, and would like to build relationships with some vendors and possibly food trucks or other entertainers to draw in more of a crowd! But overall it was a great experience and we can not wait for our next event!
What would you like to see us bring to the area? Bingo in the Barn? Animal Meet and Greets? Barn Dances? Slide over to our Facebook page and let us know! We want to hear from you!