FESTIVAL DAY
On Sunday March 25th I went to the Penguin Sustainable Living Festival 2012. It was situated in a small valley towards the back of Penguin. Originally it was to be the first weekend in March but it was rained out. The day was glorious, no wind, few clouds, just a mild autumn day
I couldn’t tell you the crowd numbers or how many stalls. The Tasmanian Rare Breeds Poultry Club stall was right at the back of the set-up. I was put there so the poultry would have plenty of shade! There was no shortage of that; we (the chooks and I) didn’t get the sun all day. I have made two re-quests of the organisers for next year: 1. some sun please, and 2. some level ground.
One disadvantage of running a stall on one’s own is you can’t walk away so I didn’t get to see how many stalls there were and what the rest of the festival went like. I could hear some clapping periodically and there appeared to be plenty of people walking around. The public started arriving at 9 a.m. and continued right through to 4 p.m.
The Rare Breeds Club stall.
The stand was very successful, with many people coming to look at the fowls on display and ask questions, heaps of questions of every sort from what part of the world they come from to what they eat! I took four birds; it was all I had room for. I took a jungle fowl, silver pencilled Wyandotte, New Hampshire and a lavender guinea fowl.
The guinea fowl captured a lot of attention with most people not having seen one before. Next the Wyandotte received the most comments on her unusual colouring. An artist sat for over half an hour and did some sketches and the Wyandotte was also photographed for some magazine.
The information packages sold well. One mug was purchased by a lady to send to her sister in England; another for a birthday present.
The banner was commented on by several people and it did promote the site with many people wondering what breeds were being displayed on the ban-ner, including me!
All in all the day was very worthwhile with a goodly monetary turn over and a lot of information given out to the general public. We have been invited back next year and all going well we may be bigger and better.
Other stalls at the event.