By Sharon Sheridan
Mother Nature provided perfect fall weather for Sunday’s Harvest Festival marking the end of the Creation Season at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Morristown. Parish families and community members gathered on the church’s “great lawn” for the festival, postponed for two weeks by an unusual pre-Halloween snowstorm.
Children rode ponies Maxi and Tweetie, led by Shannon Rauter and Jack Bachman of ponyshare.com, petted two white bunnies – Cannon the extra-fluffy linehead rabbit and Taf the Flemish giant, who bore a striking resemblance to the Cadbury Easter bunny, owned by 4-H bunny breeder Kristen Megerlein. Another 4-H family, Heidi and 8-year-old Shannon Denk, brought chickens Crooked – a Barnevelder – and Trouble – a buff Brahma bantam – who walked on and off leash, sat in children’s laps and perched on shoulders, chairs and even one child’s head. None of the animals seemed perturbed by 4-H Seeing Eye puppies in training, 6-month-old Max and 10-month-old Prince, brought by Nancy Fritts and Bonnie Dicola on the train from Denville.
Slideshow photos by Berit Ollestad. Please click icon below for captions.
Elsewhere on the grounds, youngsters put the season’s harvest to good use by painting pumpkins and playing “gourd hockey” and “pumpkin bowling.” They decorated and snacked on pumpkin-shaped cookies, lined up for face painting and temporary tattoos, tackled various crafts projects and planted daffodil bulbs. And no one got lost in the maze erected on one corner of the lawn by Betsy Spindler and Fran Lapinski.
Stay tuned to MorristownGreen.com for more Harvest Festival photos and a report from MG Kids Correspondent Alyse Jefferson.
