Events Page

Going Koi at Wildlife Safari

Umpqua Valley Home Builders Associations Home Show.

First time at the Umpqua Valley Home Builders Associations Home Show. This was a great way for the club to get seen, with 10,000 people walking through the show. Setup started on Wednesday, March 3rd. Albert and Kim came in early to get started setting up, laying the carpet and the tub for the fish with rock stacked around it.

Albert did a great job fitting the rock to the tub hiding the plastic so it looked natural and his moss covered petrified wood worked great for a water feature. They had that setup when I got there after work. Dan Browning was there ready to help out and brought some of his planter boxes. We hung the club banner, pictures of some of the ponds in our club and put together the Arbor that I made to help off set the cost of doing the show. Albert borrowed some beautiful plants from Wintergreen Nursery in trade for use of couple koi to display in a pond in their booth. The plants helped accent the rocks to look more like a real pond. Thursday evening Nancy, Elsie, Kim and I finished working on the booth, by bringing in the fish and putting up koi socks and all the club items.

Friday Nancy and Kim opened up with the Home Show starting at noon. Lincoln had his booth right across from us, Clark and Shirley was there with Lincoln as a pond consultant. A lot of people walked through and stopped to look at the fish and asked if the grape lights on the arbor were for sell or were to get them. Elsie could have sold her grape lights many times at the home show, but didn't won't to part with them.

Saturday was the busiest day at the home show, with thousands of people walking through looking for new home and garden ideas. We talked to a lot of people that had ponds or were planning on putting in a pond, and the problems they have had with predators getting their fish.

Lots of flyers were passed out for our up coming Koi Show in June and membership literature to everyone interested. Brittney stayed busy selling raffle tickets to passers-by for our show raffle. Jason and Stephanie Eldridge that were in the booth right behind us have a pond and have decided to join the club to learn more about koi and water gardening. Hopefully with more of the public seeing us out there the interest in this wonderful hobby of water gardening and koi keeping will grow.

Tear down went fast with Dan, Edna, Nancy, Kim and I taking down the booth, hauling all the rock out and bagging up all the koi out of our pond plus the ones in Wintergreens pond. They were happy to get back in their home in the heat tank in our garage. Big THANK YOU to everyone that helped out to make the home show a big success.

Randy Brock