2025-06-02 Colonial Heritage Festival as of June 2... Long, but please read! Hello CHF family, We are now just over a month away from Colonial Heritage Festival 2025 which will be happening on July 3,4,5 from 9am-5pm daily. I am sorry I have been a bit MIA this year in my communications. The school year and working a 2nd evening job for a while had me a bit crazy. But, the school year is now over and I have told my other job "no" for the summer, so I am 24/7 with the festival now.... YAY. Things are looking good for this year's event as we continue to grow with new participants and skills/talents. This year we are adding Mercy Otis Warren, Elizabeth Freeman (Mum Bet), a lovely hammered dulcimer artist, some new American militia, and some new British military... and new faces as volunteers in some of our busy, interactive areas :) We continue to grow each year, and we just get better and better because of the dedication and willingness of all of our CHF FAMILY to work hard for the success of the event. My heart-felt THANK YOU to you all. I truly love you all, my friends! **There is a LOT here to read, so please take the time to do so.... So, this is what I know to this point... 1. If you are receiving this email, you have stated your INTENT to participate. You will now need to -----> "officially register" <------ by reading and agreeing to the guidelines set forth for this 2025 Colonial Heritage Festival Event. 2. Set up.... We will be loading the large truck at the Orem Storage unit on the evening of Monday, June 30. (Anyone that is free to help, please let me know and I'll tell you where we will be. We would love GROUPS to help us, so please reach out to your teens/young adults.) We will then begin early on July 1 at Scera Park with the setting up of the large tents. July 2 will be the day that most individual camp set ups will happen. 3. Showers will be offered at the scera pool on the following days/times. We kind of take what we can get. I know those early 5-6 times are tricky with the event ending at 5, so cover up your areas and head over quickly on those days. Wed, July 2: 6-7PM Thurs, July 3: 7-9AM, 6-7PM Fri, July 4: 5-6PM Sat, July 5: 5-6PM 4. Lunches are provided daily for our full-time participants on that day... meaning, they are working the full day at the event. We can not provide lunches for family/friends that might be "visiting" with you at the event and are not registered. We have Jimmy Johns and Subway providing our sandwiches this year since they can be individually wrapped. We will have sides such as chips, fruit or veggies and a cookie or sweet treat of some kind. We are going to try and send lunches out in brown paper lunch bags this year (a bit larger than normal lunch bags). They will at least be "less" noticeable than our styrofoam of previous years. 5. Evening meals will happen on the evening of July 3 (our traditional fire oven pizzas). The dough, sauce, pepperoni, and cheese are provided. Any additional toppings you might want, please bring them to share :) . July 4, for those not going to other festivities, we will have our potluck. We usually have at least 100 people, so please plan on bringing items to share that could feed 30-40. We usually have a nice assortment. There is a Smith's grocery store close to the park if needed. :). July 5 is the last day of the event, and many break down camps and leave, so we will not do an evening meal that night. We try to do these meals starting around 6 pm. We have our DANCE on July 3 at 7:00 pm, so we would love to get those involved with that, fed and nourished. :) 6. Lodging/Camping... There are some air bnb locations in Orem that you may want to check out. We still have access to the far north/east corner of the park where modern day tents, trailers, motorhomes, etc can be parked. There are no hookups back there, so be sure to pack coolers with ice for food, water, etc. And if you will be staying in the park at night, pack mosquito repellant... those little buggers are often hungry in Orem in July. 7. Fires.... for cooking, interpretation, etc. must be above ground and contained in a proper, era-looking containment. There will be firewood available on both the south and north ends of the park. Be sure to have the fire areas roped off so the public will be held far enough away to avoid injury. 8. Garbage... There are large park trash bins by the main pavilion. EACH CAMP is responsible to get their garbage to those bins. Please DO NOT leave trash for those that are taking down tents and equipment. That is already an overwhelming job for us. 9. Ice/water....As in years past, ice will be delivered to each camp early each morning by Jeff Gardner. He will then be using the very Non-18th century Ranger vehicle to continue to deliver ice and water to all of the barrels throughout the park. As we all know, it would be nice to be able to do this with period correct wagons, but the size of the park, the number of visitors that use the water, and the continual need to refill the barrels just will not allow this to be done on foot. He really does "try" to drive around the outskirts of the event as much as possible, but it is what it is. 10. Clothing check out.... for those that are volunteering that will be needing to borrow clothing from us, the distribution of outfits will be done my Nickie Allen this year at her home in Provo (instead of Kim's home). THANK YOU Nickie ! :) The ---> clothing sign up document <---is here, so please click the link and sign up from the available times. We will also have the remaining outfits at the main pavilion on July 2. Someone will be there in the afternoon to help with the process, as well as each morning of the event. That first day of the event is crazy, so the more we can get checked out to people BEFORE those days would be most helpful. 11. Program Schedule...I have been working on the scheduled event times (different from the ongoing sites through the village). There is a LOT going on this year, and it is quite the project scheduling around everything to be sure nothing butts up against something that would cause difficulty or that people are not double scheduled at two places/same times. If you know that you are ---> "on the program" <-----please look it over to find where you are and what times. Let me know if you see "issues" and I will do my best to rectify them. 12. Volunteer shift areas.....For those that are volunteering in the chores/games/candles/paper making/print shop/etc. areas there is also a tentative schedule <------for that as well. This schedule is still changing just a bit. If you notice that I have NOT put you on or things are wrong, let me know because I have a lot going on in my head right now. 13. Map will be coming out shortly... no MAJOR changes, a few small ones.... just not absolutely sure yet. However, there is no WW2 group in the park this year. We get the WHOLE DANG PARK :) and are trying to decide what/how to use the extra space. 14. Media coverage... We got some good radio time on the Woman's View show with Amanda Dickson (now on her podcast site for listening). Fox 13 will be coming on the morning of July 4. We are doing a spot on Good Things Utah on the morning of June 18. KSL radio will give us a nice spot sometime the week before the festival on Mid-day with Maria Shilaos (which airs between 12-3pm and typically airs a second time on the same day in the 7'oclock hour), so that will be some nice radio time. Deseret News will be running a bunch of digital advertising impressions on their site in the 2 weeks before the festival. An "event" has been created on Facebook, so hopefully it starts to get some responses as well. So some good things are happening for us to get the word out. Feel free to print off any of the following pages and hand them out to family, friends, put them on cars in parking lots, etc. :). Image 1 Image2 Image3 Image4 Wow, if you actually read through all of that.. KUDOS to you! :) Just a month away folks! Please email me or text me 801-362-5442 with questions, thoughts, concerns, etc. and I will do my very best to address them. Love to you all, Kim Gardner CHF 2025 Chairperson