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Crowds fill the streets for Utica’s 56th annual Burgoo · Illinois Valley - Shaw Local

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  Crowds fill the streets for Utica's fifty-sixth annual Burgoo Written by Emily
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  Beebe This article is being read by an automated voice, brought to
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  you by Everlet. Nearly 400 vendors filled the streets this weekend for
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  the 56th annual Birgu Festival in Utica, a fundraiser that has kept
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  the LaSalle County Historical Society. Running for more than half a century.
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  About half of the society's yearly operating budget comes from this one
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  event, according to Amanda Carter, Museum Director at the LaSalle County Historical
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  Society. The money sustains a museum campus along the I M Canal
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  which has an 1848 canal warehouse, a heritage center, a one-room schoolhouse
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  from 1865, an 1875 barn, and a working blacksmith shop. The festival
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  began in 1969, when a secretary named Connie Fetzer traveled to Arnsville
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  in southern Illinois, where a burgoo festival had run since the early
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  1900s. She brought the idea back to Utica, and people from Arnsville
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  came up the first few years to help cook the stew. The
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  cooking still works the same way. Saturday morning volunteers chop vegetables such
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  as potatoes, celery, carrots, and onions. On Saturday night they light fires
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  underneath kettles, and cook it slowly overnight on wood, with it being
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  ready by Sunday morning. They have a burgoomaester who works from a
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  base recipe, but can change it however they want. A couple of
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  years ago ochra was added and has been included since. There were
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  around 100 volunteers spread across four days from Thursday setup to Monday
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  cleanup. Roughly 75 of volunteers return each year with 25 of them
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  being new and typically volunteers come back year after year. It very
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  much is a community event, Carter said. Everybody looks forward to it,
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  everybody meets down here. It just really makes it feel like a
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  community around here. The feeling was the same for Kim Sellers, owner
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  of Carol Seuss, a first year vendors, at Birgu. Sellers retired and
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  started creating and selling gift baskets as a side hustle. Sellers traveled
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  around 70 miles to attend Burgu. I'm excited about the foot traffic,
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  all the people, and the variety of vendors, seller said. All the
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  people working this, it's so organized. Between the two days, Sellers said
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  she was looking forward to meeting people and hopefully selling some baskets.
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  New to Birgoo this year was Dirt Road Reckoning, who joined returners
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  Casey McGraith and Fiddle Rock. The and Happy Hour played Saturday night
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  on the corner of Mill and Church Streets. An Abraham Lincoln impersonator
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  mingled with attendees and delivered a speech on the Heritage Center front
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  porch each day. Food vendors included Maine Cousins Lobster and Donut Daddy,
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  among others. The stew served Sunday is one of the highlights of
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  Birgu and what inspired the festival to begin locally. Try the burgoo
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  stew, because a lot of people are a little skeptical of that,
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  because of how it's cooked, but it's fabulous, Carter said.