This is How It’s Done: It took three days for our talented veteran volunteers to set up The Courtyard for the 2022 OC Fair. With things around us quickly changing every day, new features and with our special touches, we passed all our inspections to make The Courtyard a safe place to meet, greet and appreciate.

It is from our Courtyard teams and your generous service that promote our organization in many ways throughout the year. And importantly, the donations generated fund our scholarship account. New members could experience interesting tidbits few of us get to see, and there will be more opportunities to get involved for the OC Fair in 2023. Sorry we cannot keep The Courtyard looking so nice all year long!

The Tear Down Team will assemble in The Courtyard the day after the Fair ends to take it all down in one day, Monday, August 15 at 9 am until 3 pm. Contact Leslie Hodowanec at Les@ocws.org to sign up. Lunch will be provided.

If you’re smiling when you walk into The Courtyard, thank the Set Up Team!  We are one facet of many that it takes to pull off the OC Fair. We hope you enjoy some photos below of our dedicated OCWS team in action and THANK YOU CREW!

– Leslie Hodowanec, The Courtyard Set Up
and Tear Down Coordinator

We are so excited to be bringing lots of fun to the OCWS by way of The Courtyard at the OC Fair this year! Come join us in person to help support the organization and make our biggest, and much needed, fundraiser of the year a tremendous success.

The Courtyard will mirror last year with a bistro vibe. High-top bistro tables scattered around and, newly added, there will be benches along two of The Courtyard walls for seating. At this time, we are extremely excited to be bringing back in-person seminars and the Featured Winery Program, with its own location and a new bar. We are also planning to bring back Award Tastings, however, if County guidelines and Fair mandates change, we will adapt accordingly. The atmosphere that our volunteers bring to The Courtyard with their love, laughter and commitment remains the same.

To those of you who have signed up to volunteer at The Courtyard this Fair season, THANK YOU! We still have quite a few shift opportunities, so keep an eye out for our SOS (Save our Shifts) emails. By the time you read this, you should have received confirmation of your shift schedules and will receive your badges and parking passes via USPS prior to the opening of Fair.

The Fair has implemented a new program, which replaces the previous TIPS training. The new ABC RBS (Responsible Beverage Serving) will be required of managers, supervisors and volunteers who have never worked The Courtyard before. Anyone who has been TIPS trained, whether your certification is current or expired, will not be required to certify this year, however, the new certification will be required in 2023.

If you are interested in working at the Fair, or adding additional shifts to your requests, please reach out at email address
Courtyardsignup@ocws.org.

And remember, as an added bonus your badges double as entry passes to the Fair at any time, while all other public Fair passes can only be purchased ahead of time online.

We look forward to seeing you at The Courtyard!

– Fran Gitsham, 2022 Courtyard at the OC Fair Chair

Feel the Sunshine – July 15 through August 14

It will be time again to Feel the Sunshine at the 2022 OC Fair while helping the OCWS continue to rebound from these past few years of COVID by volunteering at our major fundraiser of the year, The Courtyard at the OC Fair.

Volunteer opportunities will be here before you know it! So, plan accordingly, as all willing hands and wonderful hearts will be needed and greatly appreciated.

• Servers – Sign-ups open May 1 on the OCWS website
• Managers, Stewards and Cashiers – Check your inbox (and spam folders) for invitations to sign up for these positions
• Dates for set-up, decorating and tear-down will be announced soon

We are sure you are all wondering what this year will look like. Well, so are we!  At the writing of this article, we had been advised that we should plan on running The Courtyard the same as we did last year, which means we may only be serving wine by the glass again. However, the final determination is yet to be made by the Fair. Therefore, depending on COVID numbers and State and County guidelines as we get closer, we may, and are hopeful to, be able to have wine tastings and in-person seminars, but will not know this until a later date.

The Featured Winery Program will be returning! More details will follow as we get closer to Fair time and receive OCFEC confirmation of any parameters and restrictions at that time.

If you have any questions regarding volunteer sign-ups, please contact our Courtyard Scheduling Coordinator, Rich Skoczylas at Rich@ocws.org, or reach out to me at Fran@ocws.org.

We look forward to seeing you at the Fair and continuing to get back to sharing fun, great laughs, and wine together in person!

– Fran Gitsham, Courtyard Committee Chair

Just a few months ago no one knew what we would, if anything, be able to do at the Fair this year, and we had very little direction as to what COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines we would need to follow until just a few weeks before opening. Now that the 2021 Courtyard at the OC Fair is becoming a fleeting memory, thanks to the dedication and commitment of 213 members (which was 100 less volunteers at The Courtyard from previous years), and a lot of last-minute changes on the fly throughout the entire run of the Fair, The Courtyard was a resounding success!

Following a very scary and unsure financial year for the organization last year, The Courtyard bounced back in high fashion to almost equal our highest grossing year (2019) under very tenuous conditions. We had members working anywhere from as many as 33 shifts to as few as 4 shifts, and off-shift members pitching in, more often than not, when they were at the Fair to just have fun. You all know who you are, and you were terrific! We also had the behind-the-scenes Courtyard Committee members, cash verifiers, set up and tear down crews, and employees doing whatever was needed to keep the boat afloat. This year proved resoundingly that OCWS volunteers can accomplish anything they set their minds and hearts to.

Some amazing facts from this year included the sale of  28,116 glasses of Varietal Wines, 5,598 Champagne Splits, 3,951 glasses of House Wine, and 1,727 Thursday 3oz Tastes of Fair wines and, just into the beginning of the final week of the Fair, The Courtyard sold out of Govino cups after selling 3,040 Concert Specials and 499 empty Govino glasses.

Our scholarship fund realized $19,800 in donations at The Courtyard and OCWS signed up 97 new dual and single memberships, which equates to 156 new members! All which can be credited to the enthusiasm of our volunteers!

It took every one of our volunteers, no matter how large or small the task, to bring The Courtyard back at full steam and to now having provided the OCWS a great financial foundation going forward. You wore your hearts on your sleeves and worked your a**es off, and the Courtyard Committee could not be more grateful! Thank you to each and every one!

– Fran Gitsham, Courtyard Chair
and The 2021 Courtyard Committee

After a non-existent OC Fair last year, we are all ready to get back to some live fun and, if prior years are any indication, back to having a reason to eat some incredible, fun foods that, I imagine, most of us don’t normally eat during the rest of the year. Coupled with camaraderie coming back to The Courtyard and wine from the OCWS cellar, 2021 is finally giving us something great to look forward to. With this in mind, I’ve chosen to share some past Courtyard seminar favorite pairings with you to help temp your taste buds and fuel your enthusiasm for the fare to come. Created and presented by Ed Reyes and Sara Yeoman, the Fair Food and Wine Pairing seminars presented at The Courtyard have become a fan favorite of OCWS members and Fair goers alike.

I have had the pleasure of attending several of these seminars and encourage all of you, if you want to have a fun gathering, to create these pairings at home over lots of laughs with friends.

– Fran Gitsham, Contributing Writer