ASHFIELD – Joe Osterman’s arms were overflowing with pumpkins. Each lap in the Add-A-Pumpkin Team Relay meant another pumpkin to carry until the highly spirited competitors struggled to go on.
Pumpkins tumbled across the Ashfield Town Common, and the large audience that gathered around cheered and applauded for the participants. By the time all six pumpkin games were over, the field was strewn with pumpkin shards and seeds.
The Pumpkin Games have been a crowd favorite at the Ashfield Fall Festival for the past 28 years, providing a free, fun way for the whole family to celebrate fall.
“I’m pleased to say that many of our participants now are the children of some of our first participants,” said Commissioner of the Pumpkin Games Dick Evans.
Children and adults alike participated in the joyous and energetic pumpkin pandemonium, which began at noon Saturday. The festival, which is now in its 48th year, is being held Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The festival as a whole offered a bit of everything, with live music, games, arts, crafts, and food vendors all along the Town Common, Main Street and inside town buildings.
Having started out as a craft fair inside Town Hall, Chair of the Ashfield Fall Festival Committee Sandra Lilly said the festival has only grown, now attracting thousands of people from Ashfield, its surrounding towns and beyond.
“It’s just gotten huge,” she said. “It’s a big celebration of the community (and) of all the organizations … I think about every organization in town participates in this. It’s a lot of people power.”
Ashfield resident Joe Osterman has been attending the festival for the past 12 years. He brought his wife Alexandra, his mother Cathy, and his two daughters Abby, 5, and Katie, 7.
To Osterman, the festival is a time to enjoy the fall foliage, eat fried dough and cotton candy, buy unique Christmas and birthday presents, participate in handmade games and the Pumpkin Games with his children, and socialize with friends and neighbors.
“We run into everybody we know,” he said.
Plus, the Osterman family works together to prepare for the festival by baking apple pies, which are sold in Belding Memorial Library. Vendors all donate a percent of their income to the Ashfield Citizens’ Scholarship Fund.
Evans agreed that the festival is a time for the community to come together and, for many, a homecoming.
“This is where Ashfielders from all around the world come together,” he said, explaining that former residents return to visit current residents. “It’s also a welcome to our neighbors in our region.”
“For us, it’s sort of a family reunion,” said Diane Trainor, who returns to Ashfield from Orange Park, Fla. each year for the festival.
Trainor said the festival is a time for her to visit her sisters, Janet Holmes of Gill and Pat Koziol of Pittsfield, as well as her cousins JoAnne Delphia of Ashfield and Priscilla Memole of Manchester, N.H. This year, Trainor’s niece Alana Martineau of Turners Falls also came, and the six women sat together sharing stories about their childhoods.
“Most of our childhood was spent in Ashfield,” Trainor said, mentioning her grandmother who lived on Main Street. “It’s just like coming home.”
Attending the festival is a 10-year tradition for Trainor and her family. Delphia said she likes that the event isn’t highly commercialized, as all of the games and items for sale are handmade.
“There’s no junk here,” Delphia said. “It’s all homemade.”
“It’s kind of like stepping back in time,” Martineau said of the abundant handmade items and the town’s overall appearance.
Martineau also mentioned that not having cell service noticeably allows families to connect more, without the distraction of technology.
“Nobody’s playing Pokemon Go up here,” she joked.
Lilly described the Ashfield Fall Festival in just two words: “It’s magic.”