By Terrie Welwood
The Beef and Barley festival has been around since 1973. Year after year, it was one of the highlights of the Thanksgiving weekend as former residents of Russell of all ages made a point of coming home and renewing old friendships.
As such, many thought of Beef and Barley as our annual reunion of sorts.
Just like so many other events, the annual fall festival fell victim to Covid 19 but they’re not held back any longer. So, the core of the festival’s organizing committee is meeting again on Monday, May 9th at 7 p.m. at TinHouse Coffee Co. on Russell’s Main Street.
“We want to mirror our 2019 festival as that was probably one of the best years that Beef and Barley has seen,” Chair of the Beef Barley Committee Tyler Kilkenny explained.
So far, most of the events already on the board are the tried and tested events, he said.
“We’ll have the Wednesday night Welcome to Russell gathering for newcomers, followed by entertainment.”
In the past, there’s been a hypnotist and a magician or two.
“We’re really hoping to be able to book a comedian this year because everyone certainly needs a good laugh right now.”
In years past, Thursday was a kid’s movie and popcorn night at the hall and Friday during the day, the trade show would go on at the hall.
The pancake breakfast will be back as will the car rally.
Another really well attended and fun event was the celebrity rodeo held on the Saturday night of the 2019 B & B Festival where about 20 contestants tried their darndest to stay on a mechanical bull, each raising a money for a charity of their choice.
“We had stipulated that every contestant raise a minimum of $200 in order to raise and I think that around $21,000 was raised for various charities and everyone had a fantastic time cheering everyone on.”
“We definitely want to bring that back again,” Kilkenny said. “Our mandate is to have the ability to bring events like comedians and events that might not otherwise be coming here,” Kilkenny said. ‘But we also give in other ways, like giving money to Expanding Community Cancer Care and the airport and the library. So, we’d like to charge money at the door as we’ve done in the past and make and evening out for people to enjoy and to be able to build up our coffers a little so we can continue to give back.”
Kilkenny added that the core group of the committee would like to somehow be able to draw in people of all ages, as the festival did years ago.
As was done during the hugely successful 2019 event, the plan is to have the Celebrity Rodeo segue way into a social where the band will hit the stage as soon as the best bull rider awards are given out.
“I’m now the oldest person on the committee (which now consists of Tyler Kilkenny, Brittany Pushka from the Chamber of Commerce and Sadie McCauley as the core group) and I remember the days when I was 19 or 20 when it was not only my group of friends who all came home for Beef and Barley but it was my parents, my aunts, my cousins and their friends too, all going out together and enjoying the weekend.”
And the 2019 Beef and Barley social did that.
“We know that socials don’t really get going until about 11 o’clock when the younger people come out,” Kilkenny said. “So going this route, we found that we had a packed hall with everyone out to see the bull riding which led into people staying on for the social for a while and listening to the band ‘til with new people joining them.”
“It was a ‘leveled social’where at one point, we had people all the way from 85 to 18 (years old) and that’s what we’d like to see again.”
“That also meant that the cash bar was open for the entire rodeo and the duration of the social to follow which meant that we made twice the amount of money we had at the socials in previous years and then had that much more to donate back to the community.”
While the last festival held was a ‘beyond our wildest dream’ success, there were still things the committee learned from.
“We’ve made up a Beef and Barley for Dummies playbook,” Tyler said with all the events and the numbers and the dates things need to be done by.
The base trio of committee members will be calling up those who have worked before.
If you’re interested give Tyler a shout at 773-6257, Brittany at 773 2456 or Sadie at 2048215372.