City opens final Heritage Cheese Festival

The final edition of the Wellington Heritage Cheese Festival kicked off on July 14 where guests said goodbye to the longtime community tradition.

The opening evening of the 17th annual festival featured many of the festival’s staples including cheese in all sizes and varieties from fried cheese on a stick to cheese vendors, a cheesy pet costume contest in addition to music from local musician KK Farnsworth.

Complete with a live broadcast from Oberlin radio station WBOL Gold Country, the final cheese festival offered a bit of everything.

Saturday’s events will begin with the Gary Jordan 5K/10K road race followed by the cheesecake bakeoff at noon along with a cheesecake auction and a 3 p.m. parade.

The Board of Main Street Wellington decided to make 2017 the last year for the festival after years

of struggling to attract vendors to the area and is working to re-brand the festival for 2018 while honoring local tradition for the final year.

Some volunteers were hopeful the transition will lead to new opportunities for Wellington while others recognized that some vendors

and volunteers had been coming to Wellington for years.

“It’s time to regroup and hopefully it will lead to a new and improved festival,” said Main Street Wellington volunteer Mike Hazlett.

Main Street Wellington Executive Director Jenny Arntz said the board had decided to move next year’s festival to the fall and is planning to hold it on Sept. 29-30. The new festival will have the working title of “Fall in Love with Wellington” and aims to honor everything that makes the village special.

“We are hoping to just really highlight a lot of the great things we have here in the southern part of Lorain County,” Arntz said.

In addition, Wellington will also be holding a one-day “Dog Days of Summer” festival on July 1, 2018, which will welcome dog lovers with vendors, games and demonstrations.

According to Main Street Wellington, in 1875 the community led the nation in cheese production with more than 40 cheese factories and a number of cheese storage plants in the area and was regarded as the cheese capital of the world.

In its peak production year in 1878, Wellington shipped nearly 6.5 million pounds of cheese and 1.1 million pounds of butter across the United States and the world exceeding $800,000.

KEVIN MARTIN — THE MORNING JOURNAL Main Street Wellington volunteers Mike and Scott Hazlett serve up fried cheese on a stick at the 17th annual Wellington Heritage Cheese Festival in downtown Wellington Village on July 14. Guests were treated to great food, music and cheese of all...