GAMBIER — In conjunction with Kenyon College’s Family Weekend, the annual Fall Harvest Festival was held Saturday at the Brown Family Environmental Center.
It was a free family event open to the community and many visitors enjoyed the music, wagon rides, and pumpkin decorating.
The center was open and inside visitors could see live albino snakes, turtles and fish as well as learn about the Rural Life Center and view colorful nature photography.
Abby, Emma, and James Rinehart chose their favorite creatures. The girls liked the snakes and James liked the fish.
Their mother, Kyla Dalton, said the children had already enjoyed the environmental center with their preschool classes and she brings them every year for the festival.
Community members were invited to enter the Knox County Nature Photography Contest earlier in the fall and the entries were displayed inside the BFEC building. Visitors to the festival were invited to vote to select the winners.
Outside the horse-drawn wagon rides and pumpkin decorating were popular attractions. Visitors also enjoyed learning about local insects, birds and leaves and the explanations were interactive. For example, leaf prints helped impress visitors with the names of the local trees.
An old-fashioned cider press turned apples donated by Glen Hill Orchards into cool apple cider. As Mary Alice Jackson turned the press wheel, young Mateo Pechon Elkins couldn’t wait for the juice to fill a pitcher.
Sticking his hand into the flow of juice, he declared, “It’s good.”
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