Steve Sharadin
Few people can claim to have found their life-long passion in their first job, but Steve Sharadin can. He’s come far since his high school days in the food stands, following his passion to become the steward of the area’s famous festival.
When did you first get involved with the festival? I worked there for the first time when I was 13. It was a fun and different type of summer job, and as I got older and was in college, I always found myself coming back. At that time, I was developing folklife demonstrations and overseeing some of the authentic food stands and found myself blocking off almost a month’s worth of time each summer just to keep that level of involvement. Then about 10 years ago, the festival approached me about getting involved on a year-round basis. I was hired as Assistant Director in 2008 and I’m now in my sixth festival as Executive Director.
What’s your day-to-day like? Ultimately, I oversee all functions of the festival, but I have a tremendous amount of help. It’s everything from selecting our craftsmen and food vendors to creating the entertainment schedule, coordinating folklife demonstrations, physical set-up and managing the staff. We hire about 150 staff members for the event as well as more than 100 volunteers, but we have such strong support from so many participants, volunteers and community organizations that it makes managing it all possible.
Can festival-goers expect anything new this year for the festival’s 70th anniversary? Yes! We’re going to be giving the visitors a country kitchen experience. It’s a 30-minute cooking presentation on a four-plate wood-fire kitchen stove, and they will get to come into the kitchen, see how this stove would make an entire meal, and then get to partake in that meal. We’re also bringing back the ox roast. We know our visitors have really missed it, and it’s been a fun and exciting undertaking. We’ll be spit-roasting a 1,200-pound steer throughout the day for several of the days. We’ve also freshened it up with some different genres of music, and we’re stretching the boundaries with our craftsmen as well, expanding them to include some more contemporary offerings.
How do you go about finding talent? It’s quite an extensive process to vet everyone, but we’re fortunate in that we get a lot of artists and craftsmen who apply to the festival. We will also make an effort to go out and look for unique craftsmen or entertainers if we have a certain vacancy that we want to fill.
Doesn’t sound like you have much free time. Not much! The festival is a full-time job. I actually do have a seasonal tax preparation service my family is involved in, and I help out with that for about a two-month stretch each year. And I take a couple of trips with family and friends each year. I love Cape May, NJ, and skiing in New England and Colorado. We also have a neat historic grist mill on our property, so we love spending time working on that.
