Special delivery: Macala Linford, president of the catering component of the Elmore Field Days, made a decision on Wednesday afternoon — when the big wet set in — to take her community catering offerings "on the road'', enlisting the support of Elmore mother-and-daughter team Paige and Michelle Simmie to make deliveries to sites.
Community catering co-ordinators at Elmore Field Days were taking alternate measures on Wednesday and Thursday to prevent significant excess of food remaining at the end of the three-day event.
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Macala Linford, who took on the role as president of the catering unit, said her team was “going mobile’’ in order to address the reduced patronage — due to numbers being down after the field days site was left waterlogged on the final two days.
She said the opening day of the event had been “hectic’’, but there had been a sudden drop off in the final two days.
She was responsible for 100 catering volunteers from 15 different organisations, working 22 shifts each.
The challenge came with the unknown, the field days having not been conducted since 2019.
The 10-strong executive of the volunteer catering committee spent five days at the site last week, two days in preparation and three for the event itself.
Ms Linford said due to the wet conditions, and a slowdown in sales on Wednesday, she decided to offer stall holders a mobile catering service.
"Because we are a not-for-profit we are attempting to ensure there is not much leftover,“ she said.
"In our planning we did a two-thirds approach (compared to what we catered for in 2019) and we were re-assessing every couple of hours.
“Usually our big day is Wednesday. That wasn’t the case this year.”
Ms Linford, who is a speech pathologist at Echuca Regional health, said she and treasurer Lauren Holmberg came onto the committee together in 2017.
“We have done pretty much all the roles for the committee. It is still a challenge, to find the volunteers, because people are busy,” she said.
“There are barely anyone involved in catering this week that doesn’t work.”
Ms Linford said the cooler-than-normal temperatures, and big wet, had made the hot food a favourite with the stall holders and field day visitors.
“We do a good pie, pasty and sausage roll; that helped,” she said.
She said apart from raising money for the various organisations the community catering team was aiming to provide a quality product at an affordable price.
Ms Linford has a son at Elmore Primary School, which is one of the 15 organisations to benefit from the profits of the community catering.
Primary producers: Gary Reid and Heather Acocks were two of the Rochester Primary School volunteers involved in the community catering component of the field days, which involved 15 district not-for-profit organisations.
Rugged up: Fiona Wilson was much better prepared for day two of her St Joseph's Primary School voluntary role on the gate at Elmore Field Days on Thursday, having returned home drenched a day earlier. The Rochester dairy farmer, and mother of 10-year-old Chelsea, borrowed her son's Driza-Bone and had beanie firmly in place for day two.
People power: Ali Hayes, Pat Oliver-Koch, Chloe Whitfield, David Earle, Trish Rathjen and Hannah Price were among the volunteers involved in catering for the three-day Elmore Field Days event. After a bumper Tuesday, demand for their services slowed on the two remaining days, which were impacted by wet weather.
Coffee crew: Richie Archenbrenner, Caroline Tuohey and Tom Carrodus were volunteers involved in the 2022 return of the field days event. Caroline is from Colbinabbin and has been volunteering for 20 years, while Elmore's Richie and Tom immediately threw their hand up to help at the event due to their passion for the community.
