It was a very busy and very successful weekend at the Mennonite Heritage Village as Summer in the City Visits Fall on the Farm took place with many people attending.

And both organizations are thrilled at the outcome of the weekend.

As he reflects on the weekend, Summer in the City Festival Chair Graham Pollock is pleased. ‘This was an opportunity to do something you do not very often get a chance to do; bring this kind of joy to people after such a long time. We're going to take a few minutes to pat ourselves in the back and relish in the whole thing we pulled off here.’

Robert Goertzen is the program manager for Mennonite Heritage Village and says there were a lot of good things going for the event. ‘We were unbelievably appreciative of all of the people from the community who came here. We had volunteers and committed people that were able to step into all of the positions. It was a really relaxing and fun time for families and older people and people just to enjoy the outdoors in our community.’

Pollock was pleasantly surprised at the number of people that came out over the weekend. ‘There were so many unknowns. We didn't know if we'd be able to do it first of all, with the public health regulations and restrictions that were changing almost weekly. And then it's a long weekend, it's something we had never done before.’

The current public health order set limits on the event and the weekend event had a capacity limit of 1500 people on the grounds of the Mennonite Heritage Village at any given time. Technology allowed the event to keep an accurate count of the number attending the event.

They hit the 1500 person capacity at various times over the weekend, resulting in people having to wait in line to gain entrance.

Even with the wait Goertzen says the mood was positive, ‘we talked to a few people in line and they were in a very good mood. They knew they were the line was moving so they knew they were getting in.’

‘We stayed within capacity every day.’ says Goertzen and the number of people that attended over the weekend was high. ‘We had over 8900 people here and they rotated through. Some stayed for a few hours, some stayed most of the day, but with the technology that we were using to count people, we were able to keep the capacity to our agreed permit.’

Goertzen says he heard many positive things from people attending over the weekend. ‘it's been so long since we've been able to gather to be able to do this outdoors all weekend long. It was really nice to see people just stopping and visiting with each other. The energy was great.’

It never felt crowded according to Goertzen, ‘we were able to have so many people from the community be here. Everyone had something to do and something to enjoy. Some people were keen on what the museum had to offer. They've never been here before, but a lot of people just wanted to be together as friends, family, friends, and community.’

Pollock heard lots of positive comments as well. ‘Everybody was pumped about being able to do this. Saying that this was a great idea and ‘we're really happy we came’. It was a positive thing for everybody. I don't think I heard a negative comment the whole weekend.’

As he reflects on the weekend Goertzen’s highlight involves teamwork. ‘I think the collaboration between two organizations was just phenomenal. There was a lot of grace shown to each of us. Because we do operate slightly differently and there was just a huge effort made to make things work and that was something I really appreciated.’

The collaboration was key for Pollock as well, ‘it was a pleasure to partner with MHV. Fall on the farm is their event and they kind of opened the door for us to partner with them over the weekend. Their team was just a pleasure to work with. Hats off to them because their team did an awesome job on this.’

Both organizations are now busy looking ahead with Mennonite Heritage Village busy hosting events and the Summer in the City board planning for next year's festival on Main Street in June 2022.