Czech out these kolaches!
Yukon is the Czech Capital of Oklahoma. It has been celebrating Czech heritage for many years.
The community’s tradition is to have the Czech Festival on the first Saturday of October. This year, they celebrated the 57th year of a wonderful festival.
The traditional sweet treat of the Czech Day events is the kolache. It is a lovely pastry with a fruit filling and tastes amazing.
First United Methodist Church of Yukon has been baking Kolaches for many — probably over 50 — years, and this year was no exception.
“We are the only church that bakes fresh kolaches for the festival,” stated Ginger Strong, communications and media associate for Yukon First UMC. “All other locations and groups begin baking early in the summer and freeze them to sell later on Czech Day.”
We begin the Wednesday morning before Czech Day at 6 a.m., though only our head baker, Connie Thomas, actually arrives at this early hour. As our volunteers arrive, they begin the long process of baking the kolaches with love and care. It takes approximately five hours to make a kolache from mix to packaging.
We have volunteers here for morning shifts and for evening shifts. A bake day runs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. This year our wonderful volunteers — approximately 12 to 18 per day for 3 days — made 520 dozen kolaches. That equals to 6,240 individual kolaches. We bag them in dozens, half dozens and singles. We are usually sold out of them by 1 p.m. on Saturday.
Kolaches are a big deal on Czech Day. But that’s not all. Yukon has a parade down Main Street that takes about two hours to watch. Then our city is covered with many attractions, with something to do and see on every block. A very large area is set up with many craft vendors. There are Czech dancing and demonstrations throughout the day at the Czech Building. Food trucks and shopping are available along Main Street.
One of the biggest attractions is the carnival rides. A carnival company comes in and sets up for the weekend. Our church is located just across the street from this carnival, so we take advantage of the tens of thousands of visitors to our town. On Friday night, we set up two large inflatables for children to enjoy. Then we set up a large booth that sells hotdogs, chips and drinks. Our favorite things to sell are our light-up, blinking, noise-making novelty toys. They are a huge hit with all the children.
On Saturday, we also take on the food lovers with a special offering of stew and chili indoors, plus burgers, hot dogs, and brats grilled outdoors. The smell of grilling onions and meats is a wonderful way to get the festival goers’ attention. They love our food and our hospitality. We offer outdoor seating for those who need a space to sit and eat.
This year we added our own craft vendor opportunity. We rented out 10 of our parking spaces to vendors to use. This helps give the festival goers more to see and do along the street in front of our building.
I think of all the things we offer, our clean restrooms might be the biggest attraction of the day. We have a wonderful group of volunteers and leaders who help organize and run the day. It definitely takes a village, and we have one of the best around. I’m proud to say as the event organizer for the past 12 years, this was our most successful Czech Day ever. We proudly were able to donate $14,000 to the church this year alone. What a wonderful time it is to be a member of Yukon First United Methodist Church.