Seasonal event draws crowd in Ronan
Daniel Martynowicz
Two young festival-goers play on top of Emmett May’s first-place Atlantic Giant Pumpkin.
Daniel Martynowicz
Children enjoy bowling with pumpkins at Ronan Harvest Fest.
Boone Goddard
Round bale decorating competition entries like this cornucopia from Ronan Flower Mill/Home On The Range Pies are scattered throughout town.
Boone Goddard
Community Bank turned a hay bale into a cow for the competition.
Boone Goddard
Ronan Auto Body's entry put hay on wheels.
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RONAN — Montanans young and old showed up en masse Sept. 15 to partake in Ronan’s Harvest Fest.
In what has become a yearly fall season staple, the festival featured zucchini races, live music, enormous pumpkins weighing more than 700 pounds, farmers markets, pies, a chili cook-off and much more.
Event organizer Roland Godan was busy for the duration of the festival collecting money and distributing tickets for the chili cook-off.
“I think it’s great to see such a diverse group of people come in and mingle,” he said. “I like to market it as a mini-county fair.”
Godan said the festival earned the Ronan Chamber of Commerce $1,000 in vendor fees alone. With 41 vendors attending the event a few a more late entries, Godan said the festival was much larger than last year.
As he spoke, a little girl eating a cookie and donning cat-like face paint walked past with an ear-to-ear grin.
“My favorite part was getting my face painted,” Annabelle Thingelstad said. “I like cats.”
Not far away, Sarah Dean worked her farmers market booth with overflowing tables of zucchini, tomatoes and peanut butter brittle.
“This is our first year at the farmer’s market, but we’re really enjoying it,” she said. “I’m having a blast. Nice tunes, homey feel, festive feel. It’s great.”
The tempting aroma of $3 cheeseburgers on the grill enticed enough hungry folks to net nearly $500 for Standing for the Fallen, a non-profit organization that raises money for wounded soldiers and veteran projects.
As the large group of festival goers wove between vendor booths filled with colorful blankets and tapestries, delicious food and smiling faces, the sun began to shine and the smell of pumpkin pie, changing leaves and chili filled the air.
After sampling spoofuls of chili, the voters declared Access Montana the chili cookoff champions against some spicy competition.
The small pumpkin contest judging was next. While it didn’t draw the crowd that the giant pumpkin contests did, spectators were extremely interested, as many were growers themselves. No two were alike, and they varied from blindingly white to florescent orange.
“You get to see people you haven’t seen in a while, I think it’s pretty neat,” said one such spectator Shawn Blixt. His daughter, Kyla, quickly corrected him.
“Awesome,” she said.
