News release

The Forkland Festival will celebrate its 50th Anniversary on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 8-9, in southwestern Boyle County. Many favorites from previous festivals will again be featured this year, with the theme “50 Years of Memories” — handmade crafts, delicious food, live country music, special activities for kids, Lincoln Museum, Old Farm Equipment Museum, silent auction, classic car show, hands-on art, family history exhibits, log cabin, Fox & Hound 4K Race, pancake breakfast, historical exhibits and more.

This year, to help protect both attendees and volunteers from COVID-19, the Old Country Supper Theatre (Bean Supper) has been canceled. In place of the indoor Bean Supper, we will have special entertainment each evening on the outdoor stage, and we will also have the usual Bean Supper meal (beans and cornbread with all of the fixin’s) on sale at the Wishing Well Cafe. On Saturday evening at 7 p.m., before the entertainment, we will have a short program honoring the people who have supported 50 years of festivals.

To celebrate 50 years, Forkland will honor the hundreds of volunteers who have helped make the festival successful for the past 49 years. One way they will be honored is with a Forkland Festival Volunteer Wall of Honor, displaying donated photos of volunteers.

What kind of photo is eligible? It has to be of someone (yourself or a loved one) volunteering at one of the past festivals. It’s preferable if the worker appears in old-fashioned clothing and/or in one of the festival booths, displays, or activities. Please, just one photo of each person, and if you have several of the same person over the years, an older photo is preferable, although a photo from recent years is fine, too. Please put the name of the person on the back of the photo, with the approximate year of the photo, if you know it. It’s all right if more than one person is in the photo, but please try to identify them all. Don’t send photos of people if you don’t know who they are. Photos will not be returned —they will go into the Forkland Community Center photo collection — so make a copy of any photo that you want to keep.

At 7 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 9, there will be a short program at the outdoor stage honoring all festival volunteers, especially those who have been there all 50 years! If you have volunteered in the past, please try to be there. During the program, there will be a special drawing for a Forkland Festival Volunteer Prize. For each photo you send in that we use, your name will be entered for this drawing. You do not have to be there to win, so please include with all photos a name, address, and phone number where you can be reached. We need to receive the photos by Saturday, Sept. 25, to have time to display them on our Forkland Festival Volunteer Wall of Honor.

Please mail your photos to Forkland Festival Worker Photos, Forkland Community Center, Inc., 16479 Forkland Road, Gravel Switch, KY 40328. For more information visit www.forklandcomctr.org.