One local business has decided it best not to dabble with the annual Pumpkin and Scarecrow Festival. Instead they are going all in with it.
RE/MAX Signature Properties, under the direction of its owner Wendy Langton, is building not one but four scarecrows for the festival kicking off in downtown Okotoks Sept. 24.
“We have real estate management sales and we also have RBC (Royal Bank of Canada) mortgage specialists in here,” Langton said of the downtown Okotoks RE/MAX office. “So my idea, because I like crafts, is a little demented. We’re going to have male and female realtor scarecrows. We’re also going to have Leo the Lion and Arbie who is their (RBC) mascot as well.”
The lion scarecrow will be a tribute to RBC’s longstanding logo featuring a stylized king of the jungle and the Arbie figure will be a representation of the bowler hat wearing animated banker the financial institution uses in it’s advertising.
Langton said a quartet of scarecrows wouldn’t be the only things in place at RE/MAX as the festival gets going Saturday.
“In my office right now we’ve got the foliage and everything else we need to go all out for this fall festival,” she said of decorating for the event. “We’re going to have huge autumn look.”
Langton is a big fan of the pumpkin and scarecrow festivities and confessed she enjoys their all-inclusive nature.
“We have various religions in the office,” she said. “We have a couple people that don’t celebrate Halloween. Because the festival is not along that theme we can fall right in and all get involved.”
The Town of Okotoks has once again partnered with Kayben Farms for this annual autumn celebration. Kayben will host Pumpkin and Scarecrow Festival activities every Saturday in October. The Town will get going a week earlier with activities downtown Saturday including the creation of scarecrows on the front porch of the Okotoks Museum and Archives.
A key component of the festival is the Scarecrows for Charity Contest. For $10 per entry, participants can register their own stuffed creations for prize consideration.
“The voting for the contest will be on-line again,” Kayben Farms’ Judy Kolk explained. “We’ll also have ballot boxes at a couple of places around town and here at Kayben. We’ll tally all those votes up on Oct. 28 and then make the announcement of the winner on the afternoon of Oct. 29 at Kayben Farms.”
The creators of the best scarecrow will get to donate the cash from all the contest’s entry fees to the charity of their choice. Last year’s winner, Alberta Dance Academy, donated the cash to KidSport Okotoks and MD of Foothills.
Over the first two years of the event Kolk said she has seen people embracing the concept of entering scarecrows as a form of individual expression.
“They really reflect the nature of whatever group or business had put them in,” she explained. “They’re all so different there are really none that are the same.”
Of course pumpkins are a big part of the event as well. In the past they have been carved, painted, dropped and even shot from slingshots at Kayben Farms. The wide range of both pumpkin and non-pumpkin related activities at the facility, which includes the Sunshine Adventure Park, have proved highly popular.
“What we’ve discovered over the first couple of years it’s becoming a traditional thing for families to do,” Kolk said of the festival. “People will contact us months afterwards and tell us about their great memories and what a great family time they had. What we’re amazed by are the people that come out without any kids. We get groups of adults and adult families who come out and just thoroughly enjoy themselves. It’s definitely not just for kids.”
For more on Pumpkin and Scarecrow Festival activities go to www.kayben.com or the events calendar at www.okotoks.ca
