Today is the opening day of SWISS DAYS . We love Swiss Days. People come from far and near to enjoy Swiss Day and what a celebration it has become! Through rain or shine, wind or calm, hot or cold, the celebration goes on and people continue to come to enjoy it's uniqueness and atmosphere. If I understand it correctly, it began as a way for the Swiss saints who settled Midway to raise money for the missionary fund. They put stands together to sell their craft and hand goods and the food of their heritage. Today, it still goes to many great causes. First and foremost it funds the next year's Swiss Days. Beyond that it goes to community projects, donations to local city and commnity events, and still towards the support of the LDS missionaries who cannot afford to support their own missions.
SWISS DAYS FUN FACTS
Swiss Days hosts the largest craft show west of the Mississippi River. Applicants are screened by the Midway Boosters, sponsor of Swiss Days.
Swiss Days was born as a local harvest festival in 1947 known as Midway Harvest Festival.
During the 70's an advertising campaign with KSL radio began bringing tourists to the event. Most booths were filled with local wares.
As more people came, more vendors were interested in a booth on the square. In the 80's the Midway Boosters began requiring applications to secure a booth on the square which applied to everyone, including locals.
Today 200 booths are carefully selected from about three to four hundred applicants each year. At one time the booths numbered nearly 250. Due to congestion on Midway Town Square the number was cut back.
Volunteer workers are calculated by the number of Swiss Days hats given away to each willing participant. In 2007 approximately 3500 hats were given to workers who made scone dough, manned a booth, collected garbage, or many other tasks that keep Swiss Days running smooth. And that's just during Swiss Days!
Hundreds of hands work behind the scenes long before the event begins. Food is a big part of Swiss Days. Traditional foods part of the event since its inception include BBQ Beef, Knockwurst sandwiches, bratzlies, and Swiss Bread. This work is done by volunteers under the supervision of food handlers from Wasatch County Health Department.
Saurkraut is pounded out in July. Young adults in the area pound out 62 five gallon buckets full of sauerkraut to use in food booths.
Bratzlies are made in July, at one bakers dozen (13) of bratzlies per package. 29,700 packages equals 381,000 individual bratzlies cookies and that doesn't include the over-browned ones that workers take home to their families!
Swiss Bread and C innamon Rolls are baked in August the week before the festival. Over 1700 loaves of Swiss Bread and 700 cinnamon rolls are baked for the popular Relief Society booth. Be early--the bread is usually gone by each afternoon. Half the loaves are sold on Friday, the other half on Saturday. (This is TRUE. The bread is to die for. It is a braided loaf that you slice yourself. It is awesome as toast and french toast too!)
The traditional Saturday dinner takes 2000 pounds of beef and feeds about 2500 people. It's the most popular of the Swiss Days meals afternoon BBQ .
This year, Duff and I were asked to be booth judges! What an honor! We checked in on Friday morning with the Information Booth and got our judging sheet. We went up and down all the aisles to each booth judging on appearance, Swiss theme, and then the other criteria was the quality of the booth goods. Gosh, it was harder than I thought. Everything is hand-crafted, which means to me that all the vendors did their best work. After a while we got the hang of it. We had to be very discreet so the vendors didn't know we were judging. Some saw us writing after we left their booths and had been talking to them and asking questions.
We spent a good half of the day there. By the time we got back, we were EXHAUSTED, and took off our shoes and layed down on the couch and napped! It is amazing how it all gets set up by the ward youth groups on their mutual nights during the week, and after it closes at 8pm on Saturday evening, it comes down in record time. When you go to church on Sunday--you would never know it had happened, except that the grass is smashed!
Another year down. The countdown to next year has begun!
