Two long-running festivals in Western Mass. take place this week: the 47th annual Festival of the Hills and the 74th annual Berkshire Harvest Festival (the number inversion is too interesting not to co-bill them).
The festival further north—Berkshire Harvest—promises mini-golf, a hay jump (no word on if one jumps hay or the hay starts jumping), pony rides, and a haunted house. Work by New England artisans will be on display as well as arts and crafts by the Housatonic Valley Art League. Visitors can sample the wares at Reggie’s Famous Two-Day Tag Sale or partake of tasty treats like bratwurst, barbecued chicken, Indian samosas, homemade ice cream and fried dough. There’s plenty of fun for kids, too, even the wee ones, with face painting, a pumpkin toss, games and crafts and a hay maze. For a complete lineup of events, log on to www.berkshirebotanical.org.
In the hills of Conway, the Festival of the Hills, an annual fall event that has been recognized as a “Local Legacy” by the U.S. Library of Congress, commences with the Burkeville Covered Bridge Dinner, a catered dinner at the bridge featuring harvest foods, cider, live music and more. Over the next two days, events include a 10K Road Race, a 1.2-mile Kids’ Race, disc golf, blacksmithing demonstrations, a log splitting contest and a skillet toss. For those who’d rather listen than watch, check out performances by folk singer Katryna Nields, rockers The Big Guns, jazz musicians Ricky Marshal Trio, roots rockers the Memphis Flyers and folk rocker Joel Zoss and his trio. And for the kids (or the kid in all of us), there’s face painting, pumpkin painting, a bounce house, a petting zoo, cookie decorating and pony rides.
Also, taking a page out of the Garlic & Arts Festival book (only two bags of trash were produced during a two-day event that drew 10,000 people), the folks behind the Festival of the Hills are taking compostable materials—food waste, paper products—to a farm for conversion into garden compost, in addition to recycling bottles and cans. For a complete lineup of events log on to www.townofconway.com/festival.asp.
74th Annual Berkshire Harvest Festival: Oct. 4-5, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. $10/per carload, Berkshire Botanical Garden, intersection of Routes 183 and 102, Stockbridge, (413) 298-3926, www.berkshirebotanical.org; 47th Annual Festival of the Hills: Oct. 3-5, Conway, (413) 369-4392, www.townofconway.com/festival.asp.
