I am sorry to report that the originators of the South East Texas Tomato Festival (SETTFest) are no longer able to operate this event. And despite a plentitude of motivated gardeners in and around Central and Southeast Texas, all attempts to pass on the event (even temporarily) to other individuals have been unsuccessful.

If you are interested in helping with a SETTFest event for 2014, please contact me by e-mail at morgan (at) settfest.com and I will forward you my “How to Survive a Tomato Tasting” guide. It’s 4 pages long and you can then decide if you can dedicate yourself to a few hours work to help put on an event. I think going forward, SETTFest needs to be a TEAM effort of 3-4 individuals who will step up and make sure an event happens, rather than shouldering the responsibility onto a single person who can be tied up by real life events.

All told, it takes approximately 10 man (or woman) hours to schedule the event, pick a venue, arrange a pavilion/park/other location, purchase paper goods and other supplies, drive to the venue, set up, and tear down. With two people, it’s very manageable. I will even update the website and post the announcements for you.