Womens Committee meets
The Women for Farms Committee met on Thursday, October 17th and was called to order by Ashley Davis, chairman at 6:35 pm with the following members present: Karen Warrick, Loretta Satori, Anita Schneidewind, Sam Tewes, Claire and Charolette Tewes, Kelly Sinka, Dana Tures, Nicole Issert, Ashley Davis, Ann Nagel, LuAnn Matejcak and Mark Schneidewind, Farm Bureau manager.
The minutes were approved as printed and Ashley talked about the upcoming Christmas party. They selected a menu, games to play and the white elephant. Wreaths Across America will be held on December 14th and we have attended 2 meetings since they last met. Our duties have been assigned to us and we picked up a couple of items which we have already completed. Donation letters have been mailed already and we have collected to date for the year $10,000 and are hoping for at least $10,000 more over the next 4 weeks. We have talked to 3 semi trucking firms already. The next WAA meeting is next week on October 24th.
The group then spent 20 minutes on their fall luncheon plans and will work on decorations and center pieces after the meeting tonight. The theme is Hawaiian and they have Landon James, an Elvis impersonator as entertainment booked. They are doing a collection for women’s shelters collecting hats, scarves and gloves this year. If you bring one you will get your name entered for a drawing. We will have 3 items to give away that day. They will also do a 50\25\25 raffle for Wreaths Across America. They then developed a work schedule and speaking schedule.
April 6th, 2025 is booked with Nancy Kuhajda, Master Gardener and The U of I Horticulture Extension advisor for doing house plants, starting plants inside, and raised garden beds. It will be held from 1:00 pm – 3:30 pm in the auditorium and ads will begin in February. Ashley reported on the upcoming annual meeting set for January 25th at the atrium and they will help with set up on January 24th. They have started the collection of hats and the theme is “Hats off to Agriculture”. They discussed the auction, decorations, raffles in which they will help and provided ideas for items. Karen and Ann will try to secure a cuddle a cow program. No live auction this year – it will be only online but we will have entertainment with a stand-up comedian. This will be Mark’s last annual meeting as he will retire on February 1st. FFA will present the colors again and serve ice cream. If anyone wants to donate an item for the silent auction, they have started to accept items.
Reports were made on the golf outing. The harvest dinner is being set for 2025. We will have a Christmas Cuties and Farm pets contest. They attended an emergency services meeting of which they were part of for ag purposes. The Family Fun night has been booked for 2025 for July 10th and they have several items already in place. They reviewed a new paint program idea, and they will do this with Nancy Kuhajda as they have had issues with the last person not completing their projects as the laser printer was off on one of the designs. They decided to move forward with Nancy, ask for a couple of other designs as they will be planter boxes pre-made and they would put boxes together and paint the stencil. They will work on a cost and get this for approval at their November meeting.
Fall flowers went well and they made around $1,400 for wreaths. The CPR program had low attendance so are cancelling it and will look into this later. They discussed the Young Farmers Retirement party and the Will County Fair. The group reviewed the marketing program with Britt O’Connell and decided to invite her back for the 2025 year for the ladies to learn more from. Anita, Karen and LuAnn reported on the elected officials farm tour they helped with and it was very good. The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, November 13th at the Victorian Ballroom prior to the ladies luncheon.