Cherry Grove Ag Society looks forward to new ideas

Volunteers and hungry Cherry Grove residents slap their steaks on the “Goliath,” the barbeque outside of the Community Centre. 

The Cherry Grove Agriculture Society kicked off the year’s activities with a steak luncheon Saturday at the Community Centre.

Phil Crampton, president of the Cherry Grove Recreation and Agriculture Society, said the barbeque was a success and the start of their year.

“It’s just a fundraiser just to get everyone out and about after the snow melt. Get the faces of everyone together in the community and our new board,” said Crampton.

Crampton said there’s been a fresh injection of blood to the board that shuffled members in February.

“A lot of people in the community have said that stuff has been missing. They wanted to see it come back. This was an idea to put everyone together to try and meet the faces old and new, and bring everyone together and see the potential of what could come.

“We’re early days. Only a couple of months taken over, just working out everything.”

Crampton said some of the fixtures that will be staying are the paint nights, which are “very successful,” equestrian days after snow melt, and the growing interest in using the rodeo grounds.

“There’s a lot of opportunity. I spoke with the Alberta Ag, the big governing body. As they said, you’re limited by the ideas that people have. For us, it’s to take what we’ve heard from people and see if we can move it forward for people to something successful,” said Crampton.

The Cherry Grove Agriculture Society is made up of 14 board members and subcommittees for rec services like the rink and rodeo grounds.

They act as the main spearheads for community members to contact when they want to use them.

“The facilities are rented out for functions. The rink is available free for everybody and the rodeo grounds are as well…we’ll just try to bring people of all the ages out to Cherry Grove.

“It’s predominantly trying to get everyone back with ideas in the community and find out what they want. If they bring the ideas forward, we can build it up and it can be something new as well,” said Crampton.

The Cherry Grove Agriculture Society thanks Site Energy and the Burge family for their time, materials, and construction. They also thank Hamel Meats (2015 Ltd.).