Fair fare: Food booth fundraisers part of Grant County Fair tradition

MOSES LAKE — The tater dogs were flying out the door of the Moses Lake Youth Dynamics food booth at the 2021 Grant County Fair on Tuesday.

“It’s busy in here,” said Youth Dynamics director Sean Sallis, as he filled a bucket with potatoes. A tater dog is a baked potato that has had its center removed and replaced with a German sausage. There’s actually a potato-coring machine, operated on Tuesday by Sallis’ wife Cassandra and daughter Joy.

Fair food booths provide an opportunity for groups like Moses Lake Youth Dynamics to raise some money for projects and operations, and there’s a row of them opposite the exhibit buildings at this year’s fair. But there are not as many as there used to be, and some of the groups scrambled to find enough volunteers to keep things running.

Sallis estimated it took about 125 volunteers to operate the booth for the fair’s five-day run.

“It’s a big production,” he said.

Youth Dynamics found volunteers from among its supporters, its staff calling around to see who was willing to cook potatoes and make change. The Moses Lake High School cross-country team also tapped its network, both cross-country participants and their families.

The cross-country team was solving a challenge for the Moses Lake Chamber of Commerce. The chamber operates a booth selling smoothies and lemonade, but volunteer Casey Cooper said the team contracted with the chamber to provide the manpower. The team will get a portion of the proceeds.

The booth was doing a brisk business Tuesday afternoon.

“Staying busy,” Cooper said.

It’s not uncommon for something, somewhere, to break during fair week, and in the case of the cross-country team, it was the cash register. Volunteers had to hunt up a new one and get a lesson in operating it while continuing to sell drinks.

Like the crew at Youth Dynamics, the cross-country team had volunteers willing to help out.

“We pretty much have all our slots filled,” Cooper said.

Erica Delgado, with the youth group from Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, said the group had volunteers for the booth. Finding organizers was a little tougher.

“We make do with what we have,” Delgado said.

The Moses Lake Lions Club has struggled to fill its schedule during the past few fairs, club members said, but this year they found volunteers among family and friends.

“We asked a lot of people,” said Lions Club member Bob Trask.

Volunteer Mary Heston said she was asked by her son to lend a hand. She knew what she was getting into, she said, having worked the Moses Lake Lioness Space Burger booth back in the 1970s.

The Lions Club concentrates on dessert, selling ice cream and lion ears, which are like elephant ears.

“Only better in every way,” according to a sign hanging on the side of the booth.

“Small batch, handcrafted, bespoke lion ears,” said Moses Lake Lions Club member William West.

They are made from scratch, and a crew was busy mixing dough and rolling them out, with the help of a machine that separates the batch of dough into individual lion ears. Like the potato-coring machine, it’s old school and manually operated.

The dough preparation crew was keeping up, but demand was such they didn’t have time to stand around.

Trask was cooking around noon.

“It’s been nice and steady,” he said. “We feel pretty good about it.”

Back at the Youth Dynamics booth, buckets overflowed with cored potatoes. The cores don’t go to waste – they too are on the menu.

“Tater tails,” Sallis said.

More photos from the 2021 Grant County Fair can be found here.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.