The little town where I live has been putting on this Seafood Festival since 1998 and our Boy Scout Troop has been participating since 1999. I have been a member since 2004 and have not missed working a festival since. This festival has been growing every year and has turned into one of the biggest festivals in the area with over 30,000 visitors over the weekend. This festival has also become our Troops soul provider for funding the Troop each year. Most Troops have to pay dues and go out and do fundraisers every month just to keep things going. We work 2 days in June and 3 days in October and earn enough to fund the Troop all year and none of our members have to pay annual dues to the Troop.
We cook and sell award winning peach cobbler on site and have become very well known around the community for it. Leading up to the festival we will start hearing from people that they can't wait to come get some cobbler. Some even only come to the festival for the cobbler. We also have a deal with the city that we keep the park clean and take care of all the trash all weekend and then they make a donation to the Troop. Since we are a non-profit organization we can't contract it out but we can do it for free and then accept a donation later.
I have been to festivals all over our area and all over the country and I have to say (and I'm not being biased) that this is the cleanest one I have ever been to. You will not hardly ever see a piece of trash on the ground and will never see a trash can full. Our boys really work their tails off and take a lot of pride in keeping the park clean! You can't walk anywhere in the park at any given time and not see one of these T-shirts moving around looking for something to clean:
We start in June by making a trip to Dickey Farms in Musella, GA who donate all the peaches to us and then meeting the next day to peel, slice, bag and get the peaches in the freezer for October. We always get a great turnout and have prepped 40 bushels of peaches in under 5 hours before. Then we wait until the Thursday night before the festival when we can get in and set up our booth where we cook and sell the cobbler along with coffee and hot chocolate. We cook all the cobbler in dutch ovens using charcoal on a big sand table. At times we will have 20 dutch ovens going at the same time and can barely keep up with the hungry people craving cobbler.
Here are a few pictures of our booth and set up:
Front of the booth:
Here are some of the trophies we have won at past festivals:
Back of booth:
Some of our sand table with dutch ovens going and our chimney table where we get all the coals burning:
This is our prep table where they mix the peaches and spices right before going into the dutch ovens:
And the good stuff, here's one ready to be served:
And if you visit our booth you can taste this:
The best part:
I don't have any official numbers yet but I think we cooked and sold about 220 dutch ovens of cobbler this weekend. There is about 8-10 servings in a dutch oven at $4 plain or $5 ala mode so I think we had a pretty good year! On average after the net profit on the booth and the city's donation to our clean up crews we usually clear about $8000 for the weekend and I think we were probably right on track for that this year!
The boys do about 80% of the work over the weekend and there isn't one parent who walks away not bursting with pride for every one of the boys!!!
Just so you get an idea of how big this festival has become here are some more pictures of the pavilion where over 40 food vendors sell enough variety that no one can say there wasn't something they just absolutely loved.
There is entertainment for everyone all weekend from local bands, local dance groups, ballet, karate demos,school bands, barbershop quartets, gymnasts and lots of other things going on. The Saturday night headlining acts bring out the biggest crowds though. In the past we have had The Little River Band, Survivor, Charlie Daniels, Gin Blossoms and Greg Allman among others. This year we had Drivin' N Cryin' and Collective Soul and had a real good turnout in front of the stage:
My favorite part though is the booth that is right next to us every year, they are good friends of the Troop and have had some of their boys members through the years. They provide a nice aroma over our charcoal smoke and we trade cobbler and pulled pork and ribs all weekend!
Their ribs this year were Awesome! Check out the perfect bite on these:
Thanks for looking and if you are ever in the area on the third weekend of October make plans to come out to the Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival, you won't be disappointed!!!
(when I get some official numbers I will post them)
We cook and sell award winning peach cobbler on site and have become very well known around the community for it. Leading up to the festival we will start hearing from people that they can't wait to come get some cobbler. Some even only come to the festival for the cobbler. We also have a deal with the city that we keep the park clean and take care of all the trash all weekend and then they make a donation to the Troop. Since we are a non-profit organization we can't contract it out but we can do it for free and then accept a donation later.
I have been to festivals all over our area and all over the country and I have to say (and I'm not being biased) that this is the cleanest one I have ever been to. You will not hardly ever see a piece of trash on the ground and will never see a trash can full. Our boys really work their tails off and take a lot of pride in keeping the park clean! You can't walk anywhere in the park at any given time and not see one of these T-shirts moving around looking for something to clean:
We start in June by making a trip to Dickey Farms in Musella, GA who donate all the peaches to us and then meeting the next day to peel, slice, bag and get the peaches in the freezer for October. We always get a great turnout and have prepped 40 bushels of peaches in under 5 hours before. Then we wait until the Thursday night before the festival when we can get in and set up our booth where we cook and sell the cobbler along with coffee and hot chocolate. We cook all the cobbler in dutch ovens using charcoal on a big sand table. At times we will have 20 dutch ovens going at the same time and can barely keep up with the hungry people craving cobbler.
Here are a few pictures of our booth and set up:
Front of the booth:
Here are some of the trophies we have won at past festivals:
Back of booth:
Some of our sand table with dutch ovens going and our chimney table where we get all the coals burning:
This is our prep table where they mix the peaches and spices right before going into the dutch ovens:
And the good stuff, here's one ready to be served:
And if you visit our booth you can taste this:
The best part:
I don't have any official numbers yet but I think we cooked and sold about 220 dutch ovens of cobbler this weekend. There is about 8-10 servings in a dutch oven at $4 plain or $5 ala mode so I think we had a pretty good year! On average after the net profit on the booth and the city's donation to our clean up crews we usually clear about $8000 for the weekend and I think we were probably right on track for that this year!
The boys do about 80% of the work over the weekend and there isn't one parent who walks away not bursting with pride for every one of the boys!!!
Just so you get an idea of how big this festival has become here are some more pictures of the pavilion where over 40 food vendors sell enough variety that no one can say there wasn't something they just absolutely loved.
There is entertainment for everyone all weekend from local bands, local dance groups, ballet, karate demos,school bands, barbershop quartets, gymnasts and lots of other things going on. The Saturday night headlining acts bring out the biggest crowds though. In the past we have had The Little River Band, Survivor, Charlie Daniels, Gin Blossoms and Greg Allman among others. This year we had Drivin' N Cryin' and Collective Soul and had a real good turnout in front of the stage:
My favorite part though is the booth that is right next to us every year, they are good friends of the Troop and have had some of their boys members through the years. They provide a nice aroma over our charcoal smoke and we trade cobbler and pulled pork and ribs all weekend!
Their ribs this year were Awesome! Check out the perfect bite on these:
Thanks for looking and if you are ever in the area on the third weekend of October make plans to come out to the Great Ogeechee Seafood Festival, you won't be disappointed!!!
(when I get some official numbers I will post them)
