By Justice Emerick & Tommy Burkhammer Jr.
PSC held its 36th annual Lumberjack Festival on Saturday, October 11th at the PSC/UF Milton campus. The doors opened at 9:30 a.m. and the contests started at 10 a.m. and were over around 3:30 p.m. This event held numerous lumberjack related contests with 4 different classes of competition: High School, Women, Men, and Jack & Jill. There were also numerous vendors and organizations there representing themselves and informing the public on what they do in the community.
One of the organizations that showed up for the festival was Santa Rosa County Animal Services. These wonderful people that help the animals in Santa Rosa county brought 10 dogs and offered a discounted adoption fee at only $10 in hopes to adopt some of the animals out. We are pleased to report that 7 of the 10 dogs brought did get adopted into loving families.
Unfortunately, there are still many animals in the SRC animal shelter that need a loving home or even just a volunteer to take them out for a walk or a day trip. If you’d like to volunteer please call the volunteer coordinator for the shelter at 850-981-8878 M-F 11:30 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Another fantastic organization that was in attendance was the Veteran and Military Family Service Center of PSC. This organization is an amazing resource for our veterans and their families who happen to be students at PSC. They offer personal academic advising, guidance on using educational benefits, priority enrollment, and much more. We are glad to be part of a school that supports our Veterans and their families.
Now we will get a firsthand report of the contests from our in-house lumberjack, Justice Emerick, who brought home 6 medals!
If I may be so informal, I did not go there to compete. That was until I saw a guy named Donovan Powell waiting for a partner in the log rolling competition for almost fourty-five minutes. As it would turn out, Donovan is an avid goer of the Lumberjack Festival, and even though I had never log-rolled before, was delighted to have a partner. To play the games and have your score recorded you needed to register. I, however, did not do that until they announced the winners of the first round of competitions, where Donovan and I (who was not registered) won second place!
I had the hunger for winning and promptly registered after that. I, along with Donovan, competed in every event the rest of the day. It was both awesome and extreme in some aspects, as it put your physical fitness to the test– and mine was tested. All in all, I won six medals, two with my found friend and one that is waiting to be mailed. The experience was one I never expected to have and one I completely recommend. I know I will be returning next year! I’m so happy that we’ve been able to give you a firsthand look into the day of a lumberjack. With all the chopping and sawing I’m sure it would be hard work to do alone.
However, there was one family who wouldn’t have to do this work alone, the Wetherbees! This family performed wonderfully and went home with 9 medals and 10 1st place
wins. Mr. & Mrs. Wetherbee even won Grand Champion Lumberjack and Lumberjill. Truly an exemplary family of athletes.
Overall the ‘25 Lumberjack Festival was a great success. An amazing day for families to spend together and maybe even add a new canine addition, and for those who may want to chop, throw, and roll some wood.