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Community Corner

Fall is in the Air at SM&NC

This weekend marked Stamford Museum & Nature Center's Harvest Festival Weekend — two days of pumpkins, apples, and all-around fall fun.

When (SM&NC) decided to host their first two-day weekend festival, they imagined that it would give them a back-up day in case of inclement weather. The weather may have had the last laugh, however, and SM&NC had two perfect sun-drenched October days for their 2011 Harvest Festival.

“It’s a just a beautiful day to be on the farm,” Will Kies, Director of Education & Heckscher Farm, told Patch. “I think it’s nice to give families the option of two days, or to join us for both.”

Volunteer Nancy Bono has worked the pumpkin carving table for the past three years, letting small guests touch the pumpkin pulp and check out her carving strategies.

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“Now, we’re on a farm, what do you think we’re going to do with this stuff?” Nancy Bono asked one young visitor as she held out the seeds and pulp. “We’re going to feed it to the pigs!”

Nearby, volunteers sold pumpkins, visitors checked out the scarecrow competition, and animals from Heckscher farm were led around to visit with farm guests.

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“I’m a member here with my family,” Scott Mirkin of Stamford’s Board of Finance said. “This is a great place to come and enjoy the diversity of Stamford.”

“We love to see the city’s facilities being utilized like this,” Mayor Michael Pavia said.

Children visiting the farm had the opportunity to turn the crank to make apple cider, participate in a Halloween costume parade, propel apples out across the pond with the ever-popular apple slingshot, and get hands-on with some farm tools.

“The kids love it,” Debbie Ritchie, educator and birthday party coordinator at Heckscher Farm, said. “They love tools, especially tools that they can play with.”

Ritchie and her team of volunteers helped children to walk on the dog or goat treadmill, suit up in a human yoke, and pedal the machine that would have been used to sharpen tools and blades. Inside a barn, volunteers demonstrated how to make dolls and scarecrows from corn husks.

“We’re using green husks today,” Volunteer Pat Hutchison said. “I was an adult when I learned to make corn husk dolls, it was when I was a young mother.”

With hands full of cider donuts, children watched corn being cooked over a fire up by the Sugar House.

SM&NC’s are growing fast and visitors clung to the fence to say hello and to brainstorm the perfect names for the “Name Our Pigs” contest. With over 300 names suggested in the first day alone, naming the piglets quickly became the hot topic of Harvest Festival.

“It’s been tough because they’ve been here awhile now and we don’t know what to call them,” Kies said. "It'll be nice when they have names."

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