Amherst Island Agricultural Society

The Amherst Island Agricultural Society traces its roots to the 1860s. A group of Islanders revived it in 2018 with one goal: restoring public access to the fairgrounds in the village of Stella. In June 2025 that goal became real, with a 42' × 72' timber-frame pavilion funded by a $208,000 Loyalist Township Community Grant and nearly a hundred local donors.

Almost overnight, a small heritage organization was running an events venue: a weekly Saturday Market, a Canada Day celebration, the Rock the Pavilion music festival, an AGM and private rentals. Its only online presence was a Facebook page. That was fine for quick announcements, but it couldn't hold a market schedule, a rental policy, a band lineup or the story of the build in one place, and anyone without a Facebook account couldn't reliably find any of it.

The Society is run entirely by volunteers, so the Board was clear about what it needed. Board members had to be able to update events, photos, minutes and sponsors themselves, without paying a developer for every change. The site had to be reliable and low-maintenance, not a WordPress install that needs constant plugin and security updates. And it had to be live before the first Saturday Market on May 16, 2026.

Built around the questions people ask

We designed a warm, summer-fair look in sand, olive and marigold, and built every page around the questions people actually ask: when is it, where is it, what does it cost, and how do I get there? Every event page shares a Getting Here section with the fairgrounds address, a map link and the Millhaven ferry schedule. On an island reached only by ferry, that is often the most important information on the page.

A full season of events

The Events hub has a full calendar that generates every Saturday Market date automatically and merges it with one-off events. The Saturday Market, Canada Day, Rock the Pavilion and the AGM each have their own page, built around what matters for that event: vendor applications and payment tips for the market, an hour-by-hour Canada Day schedule, and a band lineup with set times, three ways to buy tickets and a what-to-bring list for the festival. On the homepage, the Coming up section moves forward on its own, so it never shows last week's event.

The pavilion's story, and the Board's

The Pavilion Build page opens with the Board's own drone footage of the fairgrounds, then walks through the construction timeline, a lightbox gallery of 24 photos board members took as the pavilion went up, and thanks to every funder, contractor and donor. The Board also wanted its decisions open to the community, but raw minutes would have exposed vendor quotes, bank balances and individual votes. We agreed an editorial standard with the Board and wrote plain-language summaries of 44 board and AGM meetings going back to 2019.

A website the Board runs itself

Everything is managed in Sanity, a content management system with a clean, focused editing screen. Board members click any text or image in a live preview, edit it and publish, and the live site updates within seconds. Market season dates are entered once and update the homepage, market page, calendar and FAQs together. At launch we ran a hands-on training session with the board members chosen to manage content, on the real site rather than a demo, and handed day-to-day updates over to them.

The core site launched on May 4, 2026, as committed and nearly two weeks before the market opened. Photos, minutes and event details went up over the summer as the Board sent them in.

• Online presence: Facebook page only → a 14-page website the Society runs itself
• Delivery: core site built and launched in one week
• Event pages: 4 dedicated pages, plus a full season calendar
• Transparency: 44 meeting summaries published, back to 2019
• Handoff: selected board members trained to manage all content

Visitors deciding whether to take the ferry over now find the date, time, lineup and ferry schedule in one place, and the Society's volunteers keep it current themselves. Rocket 5 Studios is based in Stella, a few minutes from the fairgrounds, and stays on hand when the Society needs something bigger. A members-only area with full meeting records is planned as a second phase.

See more of our websites for non-profits and community groups.

Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Sanity CMS with Visual Editing, Vercel, GSAP, Vercel Web Analytics