First of all a big Thank You! goes to all our volunteers at the Festival on 14-15 July:

Jackie Rawden
Sally Turnbull
Liz Wilding
Muryel Boulay.

Says Sally “I was in the Dairy tent, on my own, which was good fun. The exhibitors were great and quite understood that I knew as much as they did about the event! I had to sort out power and hand washing facilities and then support them if they had a problem. The Oxon Young Farmers were great…Lots of children wanted to try food, but I got the feeling that the parents were the ones who were being educated!”…

We all enjoyed helping and working with kids, despite lack of organisation at times, but this is understandable at a first-time event which proved to be so popular and yet so understaffed. The festival exceeded all organisers’ expectations with almost 20,000 visitors in 2 days. See some pictures of the day.

A second Festival is imminent now and we hope that we will recruit more volunteers from among our members.

And we also hope that Slow Food UK will have a presence at the Festival because we all missed Slow Food there. All our volunteers promoted Slow Food as they could, by wearing t-shirts, aprons, talking to visitors and giving away leaflets and forms, but for such a big event we feel that it should be SF UK organising a large presence throughout the Festival.

Three of our members were also the main figures at the Festival: Eka Morgan, Festival Director, Raymond Blanc and Sophie Grigson as Festival Patrons. Big Thank You to them for their dedication and hard work!