What's happening at the Fair?

 A noisy delightful crowd filled the Skamokawa Grange Hall last Saturday night as the Wahkiakum County Fair Board members and volunteers served a very nice dinner to over 100 guests. The Valentine Diamond Dinner is the Fair Board’s biggest fundraising event each year. A hard working group of volunteers planned and staffed this big event and did a fantastic job!

 The dinner preparation took many hours and then five excellent waitresses worked quickly to get the food hot off the barbeque and stoves out to our guests. Thank-you Sharyl Iblings, Kathleen Morgain, Ursula Petralia, Christeena Bassi and Kyla Deal, you are such wonderful waitresses and made the dinner go so smoothly. Mike Backman and Cheryl Backman served coffee, creamer and water all evening to our many guests so they wouldn’t need to leave their tables. Thank you, Mike and Cheryl!

 Did you notice the waitresses were wearing some bright red aprons? These aprons were sewn by Arlene Stefan and Linda Ramsey then Penny Gregory ironed the aprons to make them look so sharp. We appreciate their expert sewing skills and our waitresses will wear these aprons at our future Valentine Dinner events. The aprons added color and charm to our festive event and we thank Blair Brady for the idea and donating funds to cover the cost of the material for these nice aprons.

 At our wine table: Shawn Deal, Tina Vincent, Kathy and Russ Durrah added to the festive event with their cheerful attitude as they kept our guests’ beverage orders filled.

In the kitchen I was privileged to work with Janet Bryan, Nancy Moore, Joe Blalock, Mirjami Coons and Julie Smiley. We each found our place in the food preparation line and sent out plate after plate of beautiful salads, dinners and desserts. Special thanks to Kay Chamberlain for spicing up the green beans, Kyla Deal for helping make the desserts look so nice and Joe Blalock for keeping the coffee pots going for hours and serving up gallons of green beans!

 The entire evening was filled with wonderful music for our guests to enjoy. Kathleen Peterson played the piano and filled the Hall with lively tunes during dinner. After dessert was served, Jerry Ledtke on guitar and Pat Conrad on bass took the stage and they performed a nice set of songs written by Jerry Ledtke.

 Kayrene Gilbertsen did a great job selling and collecting tickets. Martha Backman made sure each guest received their complimentary raffle ticket. Thanks, Kayrene and Martha for keeping the line moving and directing our guests toward the raffle table!

 Busy selling raffle tickets with a smile all evening was Maureen Zacher-Bockius. Earlier in the week she joined Kay Chamberlain, Susan Rawls and I, to do some major decorating at the hall. Helping set tables were Kay, Maureen, Blair, Julie Smiley and Janet Bryan. These nice people made the dinner prep so much easier this year!

 We have the very best barbecue chefs cook at our dinner each year. Bill Coons and Blair Brady were cooking a lot of steaks at a time on the grill. That takes careful watching to be sure the steaks don’t cook too slow or too fast. Bill and Blair received some good help again this year from Craig, his job was to get the steaks ready for the chefs to put on the barbecue. The Portabella mushrooms disappeared too quickly as more people learn how delicious they are coming right off the barbecue grill. Thank you Craig, Bill and Blair for being the great chefs you are and helping to make this dinner extra special.

 Extra special thanks to Cathlamet Bank of the Pacific, Rosburg Store, Deals Only, Cathlamet Building Materials, Kay Chamberlain, Janet Bryan and Becky Ledtke/Heavy Stone Jewelry for their help advertising, generous donations and for selling tickets to our event.

The day after cleanup crew: Thank you, Kay Chamberlain, Jerry Ledtke, Becky Ledtke and Ed Stevens.

 Our next event is “Easter Bingo” March 22 at the JA Wendt Multi-purpose room. Watch this column for more details. The fair office is open by appointment only. If you need to gain access to the fairgrounds contact Fair Manager Becky Ledtke @ 795-3480 or 560-0371 and leave a message.