PORT ANGELES — StreamFest is being revamped, and the North Olympic Land Trust is seeking suggestions on changes that should be made.
“We’re redesigning StreamFest to go back to its original roots as outreach,” said Colleen Teevin, the land trust’s farmland conservation and development specialist.
The smorgasbord, which featured locally grown and prepared food at the annual summer event, will be dropped, Teevin said.
So will the silent auction that has, in the past, been part of the annual celebration of land preservation at Ennis Arbor Farm.
Instead, the idea is to focus more on education, Teevin said.
Volunteers are invited to attend planning meetings. The first will be Thursday.
Teevin said that, since the meeting will be at a private home, she prefers that potential volunteers contact her to be told the time and place of the meeting.
The 12th annual StreamFest will be July 31 at the Ennis Arbor Farm, 800 Lindberg Road, Port Angeles.
“When the Land Trust and Friends of the Fields merged last spring, the number of outreach and fundraising activities increased greatly,” Teevin said.
“We have been reassessing and restructuring our existing activities. This year, StreamFest will focus more on outreach and education than on fundraising,” she added.
“We would like area residents to share their ideas on how best to retain, add or alter existing StreamFest activities.”
StreamFest Chairwoman Robbie Mantooth and her husband, Jim Mantooth, have provided much of the leadership as well as the location for StreamFest, which is on their land, since its beginning.
The Mantooths said they welcome being able to focus on the event’s original outreach goals without the pressure of fundraising activities, Teevin said.
StreamFest began as an opportunity for people to see some of the local, natural qualities the land trust protects through guided tours of Ennis Creek, forests and agricultural areas on Ennis Arbor Farm.
“Those activities, along with dozens of informational booths, the Procession of Species costume parade and presentations in the band shell Jim built, continue to be popular, but we’re always open to new ideas,” Robbie Mantooth said.
The land trust has conserved special qualities of land on 2,295 acres since area residents established the nonprofit organization in 1990, Teevin said.
Those qualities include habitat for salmon and other wildlife, farmland, commercial timberland, clean water and air, scenic vistas, open space and cultural heritage.
She said 2011 projects include farmland protection of 60 acres of Finn Hall Farm in Agnew, salmon and other wildlife habitat for the last two miles of Siebert Creek before it enters the Strait of Juan de Fuca and salmon, other wildlife habitat for 94 acres in the West End and collaborative conservation planning with other organizations and agencies as part of the Western Straits region.
To contact Teevin, e-mail colleen@nolt.org or phone her at the land trust office at 360-417-1815, ext. 5.
