In order to prepare the land for the thousands of women who converge upon it every August, Vogel and her staff work year-round, spending three to four months in Walhalla, Michigan, and the rest of the year in the Oakland office. Sandy Ramsey, the festival’s bookkeeper, has worked full-time at WWTMC for 21 years, and credits the festival with helping her to build a family of lifelong friends around the world. Kim Wilson, who handles much of the crew assignments, has worked full-time for three years, but also has worked as a crewmember for 15 years. The latest addition to the office staff, Terri Lynne Delk, joined the Oakland office last year, but has been part of the festival for the past decade as both a camper and a crewmember.

But although each of the Oakland staff tends to take on responsibilities in a particular area, they were all eager to stress that decisions are made together and often with input from others, including crew coordinators and women around the world who might offer their advice on films or bands.

In addition, all office workers communicate with the women who attend the festival by dealing with correspondence, taking phone calls, and processing applications and tickets. “One of the ways in which we stay in touch with the women who attend the festival, the campers, is we all process tickets,” explains Ramsey. “And all of us have some amount of correspondence that takes place with women attending…so everyone who works either in the Oakland office or in the Michigan Walhalla office actually has contact with campers either through processing tickets or answering the phone or doing the mail. So it’s one of the ways that we don’t get so focused on our jobs that we get out of touch with one of the most important aspects of the festival, which is the women who attend.”

In the fall, the Oakland office begins to update the paperwork for the following year, including the childcare and DART forms, and applications to teach workshops and work on the crew. By November 1, the first major deadline for performer auditions and intensive workshop applications, the staff will already have updated the official website with the new forms and information about the next year’s festival.

In early December, prospective crewmembers and craftswomen begin requesting applications, beginning a months-long process in which selections are made on a rolling basis. In the winter, Vogel also begins to make contact with large suppliers who deliver food, the major tents for the festival, and lumber. In January the office starts to screen films for the festival’s movie nights, although final decisions about the film slate won’t be made until June, after several of the major gay and lesbian film festivals have premiered.

From February through April the office is busy with finalizing the performance program and designing the brochures and flyers for the upcoming festival. Each year the festival receives about 150-200 auditions that have to be winnowed down to about 30 acts. Vogel and the staff also attend live shows and hunt down new talent on their own, and aim to create a program with a combination of old favorites and new talent.

“My favorite story,” says Ramsey, “is…I was standing in line at the post office, and there was a guy there who’s a photographer, and he does a lot of work for musicians and he knew about the festival. He looked over my shoulder…and saw…‘Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival’ written on there, and he went ‘Oh, you’re from the festival! I know this Asian musician who…does this Chinese music instrument—you’ll love her, let me get you a tape.’ Well he did, and it was fabulous, and she ended up playing the festival.”

Programming goals for this year were slightly different because it is an anniversary year. “It’s the 30th anniversary of the festival and it’s sort of the 30th anniversary in many ways of independent women’s music,” notes Vogel. “So I thought it was really important for this year’s programming to reflect the longevity of that and the diversity of that artistic expression.” Although there are some new artists in the lineup, the majority have performed at Michigan before and represent a wide range of musical genres, from folk icons the Indigo Girls to electro-punk group Le Tigre.

During the fall and winter, the festival office also selects about two dozen intensive workshops that will be presented during the festival. “We try to do something different every year,” Wilson says. “It really changes.…some years we might get 25 dancing workshop proposals and the next year we might get none. I think it kind of goes with what kind of interest is out there in the world, like we got a lot of marriage equality ones this year.” This year’s intensive workshops, some of which run for several days, include a Women’s Songwriting School with indie folk singer-songwriter Ellis; Drumming for Womyn of Color taught by Ubaka Hill; and a spoken word workshop led by Alix Olson.

Once the acts have been booked, the workshops finalized, and the flyers printed, thousands of brochures are mailed to campers, staff, and performers, and women’s coffeehouses and bookstores around the world. This year the festival has also produced a DVD, “Michigan Fever,” that screened at several film festivals last year. “Besides being a great comment on the festival it’s also a great promotional tool,” comments Ramsey.

At the same time, hundreds of crew applications are being processed in order to fill approximately 600 volunteer crew positions, a task that Wilson characterizes as a “pretty arduous task.” Although most of the crew positions are filled by the end of April, applications continue to be accepted through summer, even sometimes being filled out by phone. Typically the festival receives a couple of hundred more applications there will be positions to fill, and choosing a crew involves communicating with experienced crew coordinators as well as maintaining a balance between newcomers and old hands.

“Overall we try to get a diversity of experience and new people,” Wilson says. “I’d say a third of the crew each year has never worked before, and we try to really bring new blood into the community and that’s really important. We try to keep diversity of age and race and ethnicity and everything on each crew if we can.”