HOT PURSUIT

Volunteers are often hard to come by for various community events, especially in recent years as life seems to get busier and busier for people.

The Blooming Prairie Youth Club has been fortunate to find someone willing to step up and help in a couple key roles.

Last year Amanda Johnson of Owatonna helped out as a volunteer at the Blooming Prairie Ribfest for the first time. Within a couple months, she joined the Youth Club as executive board member, which led to an even greater role of becoming coordinator of next week’s Blooming Prairie Ribfest.

“I was blown away at how hard the board works with Ribfest,” said Johnson, who grew up in Blooming Prairie and has worked in the insurance business throughout her professional life. “I don’t have any kids, always wanted kids. I wanted to help out as much as I can. It’s a great challenge,” she said of latching onto the Youth Club and Ribfest.

Johnson says it doesn’t matter if she has kids or not. The Youth Club needs help, and she is willing to step up and volunteer. She blames the pandemic for making her “stir crazy” and needing to get out and volunteer.

As far as Ribfest, one of her major focuses has been to find more ribs to offer rib lovers at this year’s event. Last year Ribfest ran out of ribs within 50 minutes, and many people went away a little unhappy that they couldn’t partake in the rib tasting.

Johnson reached out to various pork distributors as well as individual BBQ teams. She landed 30 extra cases of ribs. That translates into 450 racks of ribs that will be grilled at Ribfest (last year there was only 150 racks). She is confident they will have enough ribs to go at least two hours before running out.

“We have spent months coming up with more ribs,” Johnson said. “It has been a challenge as meat is super expensive. I’m really excited about it.”

Aside from Ribfest, she is especially proud of what the Youth Club provides to the community. Namely, it brings programming for 28 poverty-level children around the Blooming Prairie area.

“Not many in the area can provide the care that we provide,” Johnson said.

Just this month the Youth Club learned that it will receive $25,000 from the United Way of Steele County for next year. It’s the largest grant received by the Youth Club.

The Youth Club also relies on individual and corporate donations.

Johnson’s efforts aren’t going unnoticed. Josi Christy, who serves as interim director of the Youth Club, has found Johnson to be a godsend for the organization.

“She is incredible,” Christy says of Johnson. “I give so much credit to Amanda. I am blown away by the amount of effort she has put into it,” she said, adding Johnson is the driving force behind Ribfest.

If you came up short last year, give the Ribfest another try this year to go in hot pursuit of enjoying finger lickin’ good ribs and the great things volunteers like Johnson are doing for the betterment of our community.