Successful
Actions of Colonel Harper Grange - NY
Colonel Harper Grange is located in the hamlet of Harpersfield in the Catskill Mountains of New York State. “We’re about three and a half hours northwest of New York City,” says Barbara Hill. “It’s a very rural area. At one time, the county was mostly made up of dairy farms. Today we only have about 200 dairy farms left, although we do have quite a few smaller animal farms popping up. There are about 1500 full-time residents in our town. About 60% of our land is owned by non-residents – people who only have summer homes here. As you might imagine, that has made land prices pretty steep.”
“Colonel Harper Grange was organized in December of 1929 and named for the first settler in the town,” says Barbara. “We own our hall. We have 84 members with four new members taken in during the past quarter, with 3 more joining in September. We plan to take those folks through the degrees next spring.”
“Our age range is 19-90, and about 25 people usually come out for our meetings on the first and third Tuesday of every month, except for January through March when we only meet once a month. We have our business meetings and lecturer’s program and then we eat. Until the last few years, we met at 8:15 to accommodate the farmers, but we changed our meeting time to 7:30. The 3 farm families were okay with the time change. For a while, we tried to eat before the meeting, but it didn’t work very well for us. So we do our business first and then we eat and visit after the meeting.”
“When we became an Action Grange, we decided not to take up the password anymore. That did raise a big controversy with some of our members who don’t like change. We had a Master for a few years who liked to have round table meetings, but we didn’t feel like we were accomplishing very much. So we went back to the full ritual for our meetings, and now we feel like we get more done. It seems like table meetings are okay for committee and planning meetings, but for a full Grange meeting, we like the regular meeting order. It seems like people just didn’t come out for the table meetings. There’s something about the formality of the regular meetings that inspires people to come . We’ve had visitors who told us they enjoyed seeing the way we honor the flag and the Bible.”
“Two of our members are New York State Grange Officers. Ken Smith is Treasurer and my husband Dennis is President of the Board of Directors. I have served as the State Grange Museum President. Ken and Elaine Smith and I also took part in the New York State Leadership Institute which Sally facilitated. We learned a lot!”
“Our Grange members come from all walks of life. Many of them are active in their churches, schools and community organizations in addition to Grange.”
“We did have an active Junior Grange in the past, but at this time we not have a leader so it is dormant.”
“We do two big fundraisers every year. We hold a Pork Barbeque in May where we serve about 275 people. And then later in the summer – July or August – we hold a Beef Barbeque where we serve about 600 people. We use a secret barbeque sauce that we make up all at one time for both barbeques. We’ve found that 40 gallons of sauce makes enough for both dinners. We’ve only been doing the Pork Barbeque for 2 years, but the Beef Barbeque has been going on for 60 years! We make about $1600 on the Pork Barbeque and between $3700-4000 on the Beef Barbeque.”
“We don’t seem to have any trouble selling tickets. Some were doubtful we could make a go of the Pork Barbeque buffet, too, but we did. It’s all you can eat of course. We charge $8 for the pork and $12 for the beef. The pork or beef is cooked on an open spit all day long with our secret sauce, and then we also serve potatoes, sweet corn, pickles, tomatoes, cabbage vinegar salad, rolls, gravy, sauce and homemade pies for the beef and potatoes, coleslaw, mixed vegetable, rolls, gravy, sauce and cake for the pork buffet..”
“We do hold a Country Western Dance in the spring. The dance is a break even event, so we don’t plan to make money on it.”
“We rent our hall out for showers, weddings, anniversaries, tool sales, and that kind of thing. Grange members pay $35 and non-Grangers pay $150. We don’t charge community organizations to use the hall and several do. Cornell Cooperative Extension,
Rotary, Kiwanis uses it and the Town Board will meet there if the Town Office is being used for elections or something else during their meeting time.”
“We give a Community Service Award every year. This year we honored an organization called Core Values. Core was founded by three ministers who saw a need to recycle clothing , household items and furniture for people. They have over 100 volunteers who clean and repair items, wash and press clothing. Local foundation grants have enabled them to buy a local store. Profits are given to area Churches and local organizations. About 25 of those volunteers came to one of our meetings where we presented the Community Service Award. We had a good chance to learn more about what they do. We served refreshments and bought them a large decorated cake to take back to the store to share with the volunteers.”
“We put American flags on veterans’ graves at all the cemeteries in our Township for every Memorial Day. That was started by Junior Grangers (to assist the American Legion in our town) back in the 1970’s and they still do it today. Only now those ‘Junior Grangers’ are in their 40’s!”
“We hold a garage sale auction every year and donate the proceeds to a local Christmas Feeling fund. It’s a good chance for us to clean out our houses, and then to take home some new things that other people cleaned out.”
‘We have a booth at our County Fair. We hosted a Legislative Day in April. And every year we hold an Open House for the newly crowned Dairy Princess of Delaware County. Usually that’s just about ten days after she’s crowned. This is our local banana split night”
“We host a maple sugar stir, we stir a bowl of hot maple syrup, enjoy it on biscuits and eat dill pickles.”
“We host a Halloween Party for the community. This last year we went to the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown and then went to a Barbeque restaurant to eat together for our Christmas activity.”
“We donate prize money to 3 area schools for seniors who show outstanding work habits at our local Occupational Center. We give sign language awards to students in one school. The courses are taught by a certified sign language instructor and a member of our Grange.”
“We bought letters for the new Harpersfield Post Office building that say ‘US Post Office Harpersfield, NY’ and Grange members installed the letters on the side of the building.”
“We donated $500 each to four local schools toward the purchase of milk machines. We just try to be Johnny-on-the-spot for people who might be in need. We’ve held benefits for victims of fires and illnesses. We don’t wish trouble on people, but when it happens, we do try to be there to help.”
“Some time ago, a 4-year-old boy fell out of bed several times during the night, and it turned out that he fell because he had a particular illness. He is paralyzed. We held a spaghetti dinner and the Methodist Church told us they’d match whatever we raised. Well we brought in $1508 which was interesting because our Grange’s number is 1508. So the Methodist Church matched that amount and another church gave $1000 so the family was able to buy a computer with a special mouth-activated mouse. And it’s such a joy to watch him work with it!”
“We participate in the Dictionary project in one local school and offer Defensive Driving Courses at our hall.”
“We’re taking on a new project with the Harpersfield Historical Society this year. We have several people who are in Grange as well as in the Historical Society. We are in the process of documenting 17 cemeteries in our town. A Grange member has been taking photographs of all the stones and entering them into the Historical Society computer. It’s a joint project. Eventually, once we’ve got all the burials documented, we plan to publish a book and have it on a town website.”
“We used to do a pancake breakfast, but then it seemed like every organization was doing that. So we started doing our Pork Barbeque instead.”
“We try and talk positively about Grange. We ask people what they are interested in and explain what we do. We try new ideas and we’ve been especially good about letting new members share their talents.”
“Two of our newer members attended the first Action Grange seminars – mostly because the rest of us weren’t available to go. We felt like we’d thrown them to the wolves a bit. When they came back, some of our members didn’t accept their ideas very well because they were new members. So we had a little controversy over that and not taking up the password. But we didn’t lose any members over it.”
“The password was the biggest change we made as a result of Action Grange. We do use open meetings and have several more now each year than we used to have. Non-members probably attend at least five meetings every year. We’ve had some people – often guests of members – show up on a night when we weren’t planning an Open Meeting, and we welcomed them in. We always believed that the only real thing about Grange that was secret is the password. We haven’t got a problem with people seeing anything else we do. We welcome friends or relatives of new members, and we’re certainly not going to turn anyone away if they want to come to our meetings. We try to be very open and friendly.”
“Of course that can – and has sometimes – made some of our dyed-in-the-wool Grange members upset. But we deal with that.”
“I think that in a lot of ways, we were already acting like an Action Grange before we officially became one. We still use traditional Officer titles except when we do publicity. Then we use President and Vice-President, and Greeter because the other titles bother some people, and we don’t want them to misunderstand what we do.”
“Some of our new members have joined because they hear positive things about Grange from members. Our family has a large Maple Syrup business and we have a store on our farm which lets us meet new people in our area. Some of our new members have gotten new jobs in the area and two couples are retiring here and want to be involved in the community. Our barbeques draw a lot of people too. We’ve actually had non-Grangers ask if they can help out at the Barbeques, and of course we welcome them with open arms!”
“The Barbeques have turned out to be a chance to recruit members too. The Beef Barbeque especially has been going on so long and brings in so many people that it’s become a popular social event in our town. We only seat 120 at a time and sell all tickets in advance. I’m usually out front taking tickets, and a few years ago, someone came and said, ‘Barbara, we need you. We’ve got someone standing at the kitchen door wanting to join!’ Well, we really weren’t prepared then, but now we set up a display with applications and make a point to talk with people about what we do. A lot of people drive some distance to attend so they may not join. But they still do support us!”
“Our future plans include building a new kitchen on our hall. Our grounds are in good shape, but we may have to do something about a well. And there’s always more to be done in the community!”
“We get very good newspaper publicity from our local daily and weekly newspapers.”
“We feel you just need to talk positive about Grange and ASK people to join. You get out of the Grange and any organization what you put into it.”
|
