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GILFILLAN ESTATE - Just like with crops, Farmfest's second day was helped out with sunny, warm weather, say those running the booths at the site a few miles outside of Redwood Falls.

"Great, been a great turnout," said John Bot of RDO Equipment of Marshall said. "It's been pretty non-stop with customers coming through."

He estimated he'd seen 200-300.

"Normally, this type of event isn't about the walking through and buying," Bot said. "I met a lot of good folks and got good leads going forward."

Mike Zollner of Wabasso Diesel Service said a couple hundred people a day were stopping to talk.

"Yesterday was our biggest first day ever," he said.

"Lot of good interest," Zollner said. "Nice weather. Lot of good customers."

Things had been "very busy" at the Zieglar Cat booth according to Tony Guck of Fergus Falls.

"A lot today," said Anne Thoresen of Bloomington.

"Yesterday might have been better" than last year, Guck said. "Today was comparable. The number of people going through our booth is up," he said, citing the better weather.

"From 9-1 p.m., it was solid people," Guck said. "It's always like that drops off in the afternoon."

"We've been doing pretty good in sales," said Darnell Lanoue of Marshall. "About the same through two days."

Things were smokin' at the Prairie Smoke BBQ Sauce booth run by the Westbrook-Walnut Grove High School applied economics class, which goes by BOLT, or Business Opportunities through Learning and Technology. The students gave out samples of wiener slices topped with the barbecue sauce they make and were selling bottles of it.

"We've sampled at least 1,500 people in these two days," Shannon Helgeson, teacher of the class, said in the early afternoon, "which is what we expected to do in three days. In fact, we're almost out of samples, we didn't expect it."

The favorite flavors seem to be "honey" and "fire," she said.

Proceeds will be "invested in the business and we give out scholarships to students going into business," Helgeson said.

"The idea is I can teach you through a textbook or we can actually sit down and do it," she said.

"AURI helped us get our start 13 years ago and they invited us to Farmfest," Helgeson said. "This is our fourth year being out here and this has never happened before," she said, promising they would be back today with more wiener slice samples.