After taking a year off from the festival
in 2008, the 2009 Harvest Festival, held 30-August, was great
fun. We couldn't have asked for better weather - upper 70s, "t-shirt-n-shorts"
weather, but not too hot. After checking thru the sign-in book
and figuring that some people didn't sign in, and some people
put "and family", we guesstimated about 350 people thru
the whole day. That's the best attendance yet. We had 6 acts on
the stage from 1:00 to about 7:00pm. We also had plenty of food
and drinks, as well as volleyball and badminton courts set up.
Here are some of the results from our latest Harvest Festival. The performer photos are shown in the order they performed in, and I added several other photos I hope you find of interest.
CHANGErr (Rock) George
Turner on guitar/vocals, Cheryl Johnson on drums/vocals, Anthony
Peters on bass/vocals, and guest musician Dave Hockman on keyboard/vocals.
More info on the group can be found at georgeturnerguitararts.com/changerr
George has been very gracious to the Murray family for providing
his PA system for every harvest festival so far. I provide the
mics, stands, cables and outboard mixer, but George provides everything
else, along with his expertise in running the sound. Cheryl &
Anthony are the "Johnson & Peters Tap Duo" of Seattle.
tapdanceseattle.com
DINA BLADE (Jazz and
Latin) Dina Blade on vocals, Clayton Murray on keys/key-bass,
Jim Knodle on trumpt and Lionel Kramer on drums. More info about
Dina can be found at www.dinablade.com
JOHN GIULIANI (Accordion)
John played an assortment of tunes and was joined on drums by
Lionel Kramer. I joined in later on tuba. John is also a fine
bassist.
SANCA CIRCUS 1-DERS
(Circus Performers) This is the youth troup from the Sanca circus
school. Sanca stands for School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts,
and is located in South Seattle. They have large variety of classes
for various ages, and you can find more info at www.sancaseattle.org
The school also has a small circus band that plays at many of
the performances. If anyone has better photos of the performers
or of the band, send them to me.
LA BANDA GOZONA (Mexican
Band w/ dancers) This group is from Seattle, and they play music
mostly from the Oaxacan region of Mexico. They often perform with
a large group of dancers, and we were fortunate to have some of
them perform with us. The band has about 20 members and we had
10 for this performance. I wasn't able to get photos of all of
the dancers, so if anyone has photos of dancers not included here,
send them to me. I've been playing tuba with them for about 5
years. For more info on the group, visit their website: labandpark.x10hosting.com
I call this the "Pineapple Dance", altho I'm sure it has a more proper name. After the dance, they give away the pineapples. I was lucky to get one.
Teresita and Max are our main dancers and have been very helpful in getting others involved.
HAYMISH KLEZMER BAND
(Klezmer) Clarinetist Ben Smith also plays in the Gozona band.
When he suggested having the Haymish group play at the festival,
I thought it would be nice to have a klezmer band... and it was!
The "stage" is a trailer that Eldon Murray uses for
his excavation business (you can contact him thru our website).
The light off of the reflectors in one photo is because I used
a flash to try to overcome the bright background.
THE HAY RIDE FARM TOUR
We took approximately 10 trailers of about 20 people thru the
day, for a total of 200. We had 2 tractors with trailers. The
ride tours the farm, and takes about 40 minutes - depending on
how talkative the driver is, and how fast he drives. Eldon, George,
and Brian drove the narrated tours, and Ben drove a few non-narrated
tours. The first photo shows Eldon helping to unload one tour,
and the 2nd photo has the trailer all loaded up again. Often the
trailers would fill up as soon as previous passengers got off,
leaving very little time down-time for the driver.
This shows the returning hay ride going past the parking area. It worked out nicely to mow the hay fields that we use for parking and for the games, so that the grass was short for people to walk in. You can see round bales of haylage in a few photos.
THE FOOD COURT We had
several tables of goodies, and a grill going cooking various kinds
of hot-dogs. Darwin Newell (one of Brian's friends) did all of
the grilling. We also had 2 10-gallon containers with lemonade
and ice-tea, as well as a 45-cup coffee pot.
According to the inventory list, we served 378 hot-dogs, 336 buns, and used 500 napkins, 3 rolls of paper towels, 340 paper plates, 375 forks and 10 bags of ice. Many guests bring food to augment our own, making for a nice variety for others to choose from, including desserts, salads and fruit. Keeping the food rotated and organized was a big job, handled by Patricia and Barbara.
THE AMPHITHEATER-like
seating area is in the shade of big maple trees. Another maple
tree gave shade to the performers on the stage. At any time, there
are many people gone on the hay ride. I merged 3 photos to create
this panoramic picture. (See if you can spot the anomaly due to
the merged photos. It's a person). I count 112 people. John Giuliani
is on stage. We provided hay bales to sit on, and many people
brought their own fold-up chairs or blankets.
GUESSING GAME At the
sign-in table, we had a guessing game asking people to guess the
distance to walk around the Murray property - in feet. It was
19,821 - give or take a few, I suppose.
GAMES People made a
lot of usage of our volleyball and badminton courts. In the first
photo, you can just barely make out Mt. Rainier in the background.
Too bad it was so hazy that day.
PEOPLE Phil Poppleton
talks with his hands, to Eldon. "I tells ya, that bale must've
been at least this big, and they was doin' this weird sort of
dance with it!!".
If anyone has other photos you think might be useful for this page, or anything else of interest, contact me. CONTACT CLAYTON
Thanks, and we hope to see you at the next Murray LLC Harvest Festival. We'll post info on our website when we decide when to host our next festival.
-Clayton Murray - (I was the guy in a yellow Murray t-shirt, running around organizing the bands, doing the MC-ing, playing piano, or tuba).
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