What Do We Do in the Off-Season?
By Tali Cornblath, Assistant Director
When people find out I work for an overnight camp, the first thing they say is usually, “I didn’t know that was an option!” The next thing is, “So what do you do the rest of the year?” I would bet that I am not the only camp person who gets that question. Most people think once we send home our last camper in August, we’re off for the rest of the year. But really the opposite is true! There’s a common camp saying that we spend ten months of the year planning and preparing for two months, and that’s what happens at Falcon too. So we thought we’d tell you about those ten months, once and for all.
Hiring
Our staff are so important to who we are and how we operate. We always want to make sure we have the best staff possible ready to teach new skills, create new programs, and be great role models and mentors to our campers. To do that, we start hiring for summer almost as soon as the previous summer ends! Nici Mahen, one of Falcon’s assistant directors, does the lion’s share of that work for camp. She is already talking to our staff from last year, finding out who is interested in coming back, and scheduling re-interviews. She’ll start communicating with international camp staffing organizations in the next month to find some new faces, as well as reaching out to potential CITs (last year’s oldest campers). It’s a big job, and Falcon is so lucky to have Nici in charge of that!
Camp Upkeep
As hard as it is to believe, camp doesn’t magically get itself ready for campers to arrive every June. We spend a lot of time making sure everything looks good and more importantly, works how it’s supposed to! This happens in a couple different periods. We spend a month or so shutting camp down in the fall. This means putting away anything that can’t be out all winter (tennis nets, craft supplies, and LOTS more), and fixing anything that broke during the summer. By that time it’s starting to get cold, and we try to find inside projects to do–last year, this was building Noa’s room in Tali and Paul’s house. When it finally gets warm again, we tackle any outside projects (like the Blue Jay/Kestrel bathroom) before starting the process of setting camp up again. This all happens between the routine maintenance tasks, like mowing the grass!
Of course, we have one area of camp that can’t just be “put away”… our horses! They get a vacation all winter long, but we don’t stop taking care of them! While they live at the farm, they are checked frequently to make sure they are healthy and getting enough to eat. They live on grass for a while, but as it starts to get cold we supplement that with hay and sometimes even grain. Shoes have to come off (and then get put back on!). Pam, our exceptional barn manager, is still essential in the off season. She goes to visit the horses a lot and makes sure they are having a good school year. She schedules appointments with the vet and ferrier, and checks in on everyone. This is all outside of her regular job where she is the food director of a school!
I should also be clear: the “we”s throughout this section are very generous… Cody and Olan, our amazing maintenance team, do most of the heavy lifting when we talk about camp’s facilities. Dave runs this crew, assigning priorities to tasks, and we all contribute through discussions of what we want camp to look and feel like, but Cody and Olan are the real facility heroes at Falcon!
Health Office
That’s right, we don’t even give our nurses time off! Both Jackie and Lynne head home at the end of the summer, and go back to normal life. For Lynne, that means working as a school nurse, and also serving as the president of the Alliance for Camp Health, an organization that thinks about best practices to keep everyone at camp safe and healthy. Jackie works in a hospital in Hawaii (and also runs our social media accounts!). They both end up dedicating a lot of their spare time to camp, though. Once medical forms from campers and staff start rolling in, they review them and ensure we have everything we need. They meet with parents to discuss health concerns, medication, or just answer questions. And just like the rest of us, they spend a lot of time reading up on new research and ideas to make camp the safest place for everyone.
Campers, Marketing, and More
And that leaves you all! The last big category of things we do in the off season is our actual campers. To start, that’s registration. I spend time working on our database so that you can register for camp in the most efficient and straightforward way possible. We also want to make sure we have campers to register! So that means sending newsletters and other outreach to last year’s campers, and working to find new campers too. Dave and I go to camp fairs, do interviews for newspapers and magazines, update our website, brainstorm marketing strategies, and place ads just about everywhere we possibly can. And of course, we think about ways to encourage you all to tell your friends about camp. That might be by hosting a holiday party, making a friendship sweatshirt, or some other way. Last year, Jackie took over our social media and she is doing an awesome job of making sure there are fun pictures and topics posted all the time. Keep an eye on our youtube channel too, because you’ll see a lot more posted there soon!
We also spend a lot of time learning and brainstorming new ideas. We go to conferences, attend webinars, and read articles. They might be about a new weekend activity, or introducing a mental health support. We think camp is great, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be better. We spend a LOT of time in the off-season thinking about how to make camp the best it can be.
PHEW that’s quite the list! We spend a whole lot of time preparing for camp from September through May in a lot of different ways. To the Falcon team, it’s totally worth it. We wouldn’t want to be doing anything else!
