Strands of hay and the remains of cornstalks lay scattered across the Bernardston Kiwanis Club’s pavilion, the casualties of making iconic decorations for Cushman Park.
While one member of the club held up a flannel shirt or a floral dress, another stuffed the clothes with hay, forming torsos. Others stuffed old sacks to make heads, or tied extra leaves to a cornstalk to give it the appearance of a witch’s broom.
“The one tip is to just have fun while you’re doing it,” said Andrew Girard, a member of the Scarecrow in the Park organizing committee. “We could look at these and say, ‘That looks like crap, but at least I had fun while I did it.’”
The fruits of the club’s labor were several scarecrows that will pepper Cushman Park during the annual Scarecrow in the Park festival on Saturday and Sunday. As the name implies, scarecrows serve as the event’s core focus, and are what sets it apart from other fall festivals.
Now in its 13th year, the annual festival features live music, craft and food vendors, hay rides, children’s activities, a tractor parade, and of course, a scarecrow crafting contest.
Scarecrow in the Park was Bernardston Kiwanis Club member Mike Dougherty’s brainchild back in 2005, having been familiar with scarecrow crafting festivals.
“They have them all over the world,” he said, something that Dougherty confirmed with his own two eyes while on vacation to France in 2007.
At its start, the festival served multiple purposes: Revitalizing the park, while fundraising for the Kiwanis Club’s scholarship fund.
“All of us wanted to utilize Cushman Park,” said Brandon Grover, one of the original members of the Scarecrow in the Park organizing committee. “We grew up in the park.”
“It was just an idea to do something creative in town that didn’t involve politics,” Dougherty added. “We didn’t even know what kind of turnout we’d get … I was thinking we’d have a lot of sticks in underwear!”
But the event blossomed, organizers said, packing the park with about 80 scarecrows in its first year.
“Thirteen years ago, it was just food and scarecrows,” recounted Mark Fitzpatrick, another original member of the Scarecrow in the Park committee. The Kiwanis Club cooked all the food at the event that was then a one-day affair.
Since then, the event has only continued to evolve, becoming a two-day festival five years ago, which Scarecrow in the Park committee member Tom Mann said has allowed organizers to incorporate more varied entertainment.
“We wanted to put this thing on the map,” he said.
It’s also the fifth year of incorporating artists and crafters booths, at the suggestion of Karen Stinchfield.
At the request of resident Erwin “Bud” Streeter, organizers also added a tractor parade, which starts at the United Church of Bernardston and makes it way down Church and South streets. Grover said the Saturday parade saw 55 tractors last year.
“Our tractor parade is a huge, huge hit,” Grover said.
“It’s because nobody else does it,” Fitzpatrick added.
Attendance, Grover and Fitzpatrick agreed, is usually around 1,200 on Saturday and 800 on Sunday. Though there’s no admission to attend, the Bernardston Kiwanis Club earns money through registration fees from both vendors and scarecrow builders, the club’s food booth and donations. Today, the festival goes beyond its original purpose of covering the $1,500 of yearly scholarships, raising several thousand dollars yearly and becoming the club’s top fundraiser, Mann said.
“The money goes to nonprofits and benefactors, not just to Bernardston,” Fitzpatrick noted.
“Now we’ve got the opportunity to fund other things, like supporting victims of Hurricane Irma,” Mann added.
Indeed, this year the festival will feature a performance of “Greater Tuna” by Silverthorne Theater on Friday at 7 p.m. Proceeds from the sale of show tickets, raffle tickets and beer and wine will support buying school supplies for Florida Keys children impacted by the hurricane.
Having a theater performance on Friday was a new feature last year, expanding the festival into a three-day affair.
“It’s been really exciting to watch it go from one day, to two days, to three days,” Mann said.
Mann, Stinchfield, Grover, Girard and Fitzpatrick complete the five-member Scarecrow in the Park committee. All are members of the Kiwanis Club, with the exception of Stinchfield, who works with the committee to pay homage to her father, also a Kiwanis Club member.
Throughout the year — and especially as the event draws near — the group meets regularly to iron out the seemingly endless details, like where to distribute posters, how many of each type of vendor to allow, what size tent to get for the theater performance, who will watch the park overnight, etc.
“If it’s going to succeed, it takes a village,” Grover said.
It’s easy to see the group’s enthusiasm by attending a meeting, which invariably features fast-paced, often overlapping chatter about vendors, music and, of course, scarecrow ideas.
Stinchfield said all committee members have an area of expertise, making them a good mix. For example, Stinchfield oversees artists and crafters booths.
“We have artists coming from farther than ever before,” she said of this year’s Scarecrow in the Park. “We have a jeweler that’s driving three hours.”
One of Girard’s responsibilities, and his favorite, he said, involves carting around “Bernie,” a plywood scarecrow who is the festival’s mascot. For the past three years, Bernie has moved to different locations around Franklin County in the five weeks leading up to Scarecrow in the Park, and once residents find him, they can enter a gift certificate raffle by texting a number on his sign.
“It’s bolstered awareness, for sure,” Girard said.
Stinchfield believes much of Scarecrow in the Park’s appeal is its diverse, family-friendly entertainment that has something for everyone.
“We’re there for families, for kids to feel safe running around the park checking out scarecrows and painting pumpkins,” Girard added.
“You could be anybody and find something there,” agreed Bernardston resident Leslie Cameron, who has participated in the scarecrow crafting contest for five years with her husband Paul. “Bernardston is a hospitality town, no matter where you go … I think it’s a good reflection of the town. They just put it to gether in a festival, and you get Bernardston at its best.”
For Bernardston resident Joelle Cullen Deane, Scarecrow in the Park has been a fixture in her family since its very beginning, starting with their first scarecrow: Thomas the Tank. She remembers how thrilled children were to play on the engine and ring the bell, something she said inspired her two children, 18-year-old Lana Deane and 14-year-old Owen Deane, to enter the contest yearly.
“It’s been a tremendous focus for our family,” she said. “We spend hours and hours together (building our scarecrow), not in front of the TV, but with each other.”
Visiting relatives often pitch in, too. One year, the family even built a scarecrow in the likeness of Cullen Deane’s mother, Anna Cullen, in honor of her 70th birthday.
“People’s imaginations are incited by this event,” Cullen Deane said.
The five scarecrow contest categories are scariest, funniest, prettiest, most interesting use of materials and a rotating category, which is history this year. Often, Stinchfield said, the rotating category is meant to encourage classroom participation.
“We really make an effort to make it easy for teachers to incorporate,” she said. “Everybody has something history-related that they’re learning about.”
The five categories come with a $100 prize for the winner. In addition, Bear Country will give a $200 Big Y gift card to the maker of the best “Bearcrow” — a scarecrow designed to look like a bear, instead of a human. Fitzpatrick said to participate in the contests, the scarecrows must be built with natural stuffing (like hay, leaves or grass), and fit within 10-foot by 10-foot dimensions.
Although her family has won prizes in the scarecrow competition, she said it’s not about building the best scarecrow, but simply building one. She particularly loves how children are so proud of the scarecrows they make with their school class, showing them off to their friends and family.
“It’s really about fellowship, kindness and being together and drawing out the good in each other,” Cullen Deane said of Scarecrow in the Park.
For Cameron, building a scarecrow makes her feel close to her father Frank, who brought Cameron up building scarecrows and, otherwise, prepping for Halloween.
“I’ve had years of Frank training,” she said. “It was important to have a scarecrow made just so.”
Cameron and her sister Kathy would pepper their front yard, backyard and walkway with scarecrows. Today, she often wins the scariest scarecrow contest with a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, featuring a crow made from an ear of corn.
Still, she said the best part is Thursday night, when most scarecrow builders set up their pieces by flashlight. Plenty of giggles break through the darkness, Cameron said.
“We wait until it gets dark — half the fun is you can’t see what the heck you’re doing,” she explained. “We always bump into people we know, neighbors … It’s a blast!”
Under the cover of night, it’s often hard to tell what’s a scarecrow and what’s a human, she said. But come Friday morning, the park full of masterpieces is revealed.
“All of a sudden, the fog will lift and you’ll see all the scarecrows,” Cameron said. “It’s something to see.”
Artist and crafter booths will be open in the park Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Performances take place between the same hours, including Kurt Damkoehler, Celtic Heels, Corki & Ken and the Bork-Tinen-Kahn Trio on Saturday; and Davis Bates, Pat & Tex LaMountain, Appalachian Still and the Falltown String Band on Sunday.
The Senior Center offers coffee, hot chocolate and pastries at 8:30 a.m. on both Saturday and Sunday, and a tag sale and raffle Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Children’s activities will be offered in the park, and the Powers Institute Museum will be open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Saturday’s events include the tractor parade at noon, the Halloween dance party in the music tent at 12:45 p.m., a demonstration by police officers and their canines at 3 p.m. There will also be hay rides.
According to Fire Chief Peter Shedd, the Fire Department will not put on its usual pancake breakfast from 8 to 10 a.m. on Sunday because of scheduling conflicts.
For tickets to Friday’s performance of “Greater Tuna,” contact Tom Mann at 413-770-4077. Registration forms for the scarecrow crafting contest can be found at Cushman Library, 7 South Bakery Cafe or by emailing: scarecrowinthepark@gmail.com.