CLINTON — “Volunteering is the key thing,” DeWitt County Museum manager Joey Woolridge says about what it takes to put on the annual Apple n’ Pork Festival.

“It takes money to put on the festival here, and space,” Woolridge says.  “All these things that you have to have.”

But, she says, without the volunteers, it’s not happening,” she adds.

The volunteer aspect becomes a little more difficult each year for a variety of reasons.  And, this year, she wasn’t yet sure how she would staff the house during the festival.  Some of the regular volunteers would be unable to help as they normally do.

“It’s the volunteers who come back year after year after year who bring their expertise with them, too,” Woolridge says.  

Also, some of the museum and festival volunteers are older, and it’s a little more difficult to attract new, younger people to help.  Woolridge says she wasn’t criticizing “the younger generation.”  She thought if they learned some of the skills involved with putting the festival on, they might be more likely to want to volunteer.

“We need to teach the younger people how to build a lean-to, how to build a real fence, how to cook a pot of beans and how to smoke a ham, etc.,” she says.  “This is lost knowledge that we’re trying to keep alive, and we want to pass it down to the next generation.”

49th annual Apple n’ Pork 

Festival Sept. 23-24