It’s that time of year again in Greenfield! The Friends of the Greenfield Community Meetinghouse is gearing up for Oktoberfest 2024.
This year’s event is Saturday, Sept. 28, from 4 to 8 p.m. at Oak Park. Tickets are available now at greenfieldmeetinghouse.org, and ticket prices will go up $5 per ticket after Sept. 21. People who prefer to pay by cash should please email us at greenfieldmeetinghouse@gmail.com and we will make arrangements. To pay by check, please send payment to our treasurer, Kathy Seigars, at P.O. Box 214, Greenfield, NH 03047.
The FGCM is looking for a few more volunteers for set up and to work at the event. We will hold a volunteer meeting in mid September. All volunteers get a free FGCM T-shirt, and we promise, working the event is as much fun as attending! We are looking for people to help serve in the buffet, run food, work the grill, assist with parking (any teens out there who need community service?) and set up on Friday, Sept. 27. Please contact us at greenfieldmeetinghouse.org or through our Facebook page if you would like to volunteer.
We are very grateful to John Hopkins of Monadnock Tent for donating tents, chairs and tables and fencing, as always. John is probably represents the sixth or seventh generation of Hopkins family member to volunteer and help with events at Oak Park, and we could not do Oktoberfest without his help.
This year’s Oktoberfest includes five local breweries, who will all have a wide selection of beers: Peterborough’s own Post & Beam Brewing, Henniker Brewing, Frogg Brewing of Swanzey, Mountain Base Brewery from Goffstown and new this year, Hornburg Brewing from Hancock. Summit Winery will be returning this year, and they will be joined in the wine tent by Cabana Falls Winery and by Pinguin Meadery.
Music this year will be provided by two favorite local bands, The Fitzmurphys (Brian Murphy and Rick Fitzgerald) and The Pop Farmers, with Greenfield resident Dan Moran. Also new this year, the amazing Shannon Bilodeau of the Oak Park Committee is organizing a craft fair, with many vendors from the Greenfield Farmers’ Market. Vendors will include food, crafts and produce.
The FGCM has considered moving Oktoberfest to Oak Park for several years. Part of the purpose of Oktoberfest is to get town and local residents inside our 228-year-old Meetinghouse so they can see the beauty of this old building, but also, to learn about the many issues the building has. While we are sad we won’t be at the Meetinghouse this year, Oak Park also has much better parking, a functional commercial kitchen and a playground for our youngest visitors!
Over the past five years, our Oktoberfest guests have definitely learned about the problems at the Meetinghouse, starting with the restrooms, both the outdated single restrooms in the basement and the spectacularly ill-placed upstairs accessible restroom, which is smack in the middle of the small kitchen. Anyone who has volunteered at Oktoberfest or other town events also knows about the Meetinghouse’s wonky electricity, which shorts out after two crockpots; the lack of hot water and weak water pressure, which is aggravating during large events, as there is no dishwasher; and the water damage in the basement, which makes the old community kitchen – which was the heart and soul of town events for decades – unusable.
Anyone who has toured our lovely Meetinghouse, from the damp, leaky basement to the pretty revolting fourth-floor loft (think critters and 1970s shag carpeting), knows how desperately our Meetinghouse needs help. We learned in March that the Town of Greenfield had received a CDFA grant providing $1 million to fully restore the lower-level community center space, to make the building accessible, including installing an elevator, a new ramp and accessible restrooms; and to improve energy efficiency in this 228-year-old building.
The CDFA grant money is transformative for the Meetinghouse project, but we still have a lot more funds to raise to complete all the repairs and renovations needed through all four floors. Nearly every town surrounding Greenfield – notably Hancock, Francestown and Temple – has completed stunning restorations of their original meetinghouses, so we know we can make this happen!
Over the past five years (we had to skip a year during COVID), Oktoberfest has become a Greenfield tradition. When we started out in 2019, our group had exactly zero funds to put on an event. Our board – Sheldon Pennoyer, Kathy Seigars, Ray Ciller, Lenny Cornwell, Carele Mayer, and myself – reached out to everyone we could think of for help, and thanks to help and generous donations from just about every volunteer group and organization in town, we pulled off our first Oktoberfest.
It is funny to think back all the way back to Oktoberfest 2019. The week of the event, we hoped that maybe 75 to 100 people to show up. When Saturday afternoon rolled around, people started lining up early, and we realized our event was going to be a success. The 10 or so volunteers who actually ran the event didn’t get to sit down the whole night – I, for one, never even got to taste one beer – but we were over the moon at the success of our first fundraiser for the Meetinghouse, and it has only gotten better since. We hope to see you on Sept. 28!
Jesseca Timmons is secretary of the FGCM. Go to greenfieldmeetinghouse.org to buy tickets for Oktoberfest.