TREMONT, Ill. — After COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the 2020 Tremont Turkey Festival, the event is back this weekend as Illinois fully reopens.
Crowds of people have already started flooding the Tremont City Park to enjoy the event that runs June 11-13.
Publicity Chair Michele Garey said people are very excited for the event to be back, especially as the state moved into Phase 5 of Restore Illinois.
“There’s a lot of people out there — we were backing up Route 9 for a little bit,” said Garey. “[People] are just ready to get out and do normal things, and it’s fun to do that.”
To celebrate a return to normalcy, the festival has something new planned this year to go along with their theme.
“Because of our year of darkness, our theme is light up the darkness this year,” said Garey. “We are going to do luminaries at dusk [Friday night].
“We’re going to ring the park with them to celebrate being back.”
Planning for the festival began around January, according to Garey. At that time, they had started planning for a drive-thru Turkey Festival due to the restrictions in place at the time.
“At that point, carnivals were not allowed to operate in Illinois,” said Garey. “Early May we knew we were going to start planning for a full festival like we normally do.”
Since the festival was going to originally be a drive-thru, planners for the event had purchased fewer turkeys than usual.
But when they found out they would be having a full festival, they had to buy more turkeys.
“We are grilling 1,500 turkeys this weekend,” said Garey. “We were able to up the count to 1,500, which is near normal amounts.
“We’ve been cooking turkeys on our new rotisseries since 5:00 [Friday] morning.”
Garey said their vendors were able to help them in increasing their number of turkeys on such a short notice.
Food will be available all weekend at the festival, as well as entertainment options for children, adults, and families.
Various bands will be playing in the park all weekend, with no cost of admission for any part of the event.
A full schedule of the Tremont Turkey Festival, including the annual parade Sunday at 2:00 p.m., can be found on their website.
“We’re back — we’re happy to be back — so come on out and get your turkey sandwich,” said Garey.
The festival will be accepting credit cards in addition to cash, something that began in 2019.
Full interview with Garey:
