The town of Taber, Alta., celebrated the opening of its 44th Cornfest Thursday afternoon, but corn will be in shorter supply than usual after a severe thunderstorm on Aug. 6 decimated the popular local crop.
The storm saw winds as strong as 146 kilometers and hour and golf ball-sized hail, flattening farmers’ fields in the Taber and Barnwell regions.
With Cornfest organizers facing many questions surrounding how they would proceed with the summer festival, chair Jared Bell said it didn’t turn out to be as dire as they had originally feared.
“We’ve still got some corn, which is probably the majority of the questions we got,” Bell said with a laugh.
“I can’t quote exact numbers… I think they had originally thought they had lost 90 per cent of it, but it doesn’t sound like it worked out to be quite that bad,” he said.
Bell said he and other organizers made sure they spread the word that it would be business as usual for the festival.
“I think we did a pretty good job of putting it out there,” said Bell. “Social media makes it pretty easy. We can get that message out there pretty quick.
“So as far as we’re concerned, we’re still expecting about average attendance.”
Bell said based on previous years’ attendance, they could see as many as 5,000 people visit Cornfest on any given day.
While the corn-eating and corn-tasting competitions are always fan favourites, and are still scheduled, Bell said there are lots of other things for families to take in.
“We got a midway again this year, there will be some axe throwing going on, we’ve got a car show on Saturday morning,” he said, “lots of ground activities around, so there’s plenty to do still, for sure.”
Cornfest wraps up with fireworks on Saturday night.