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POUND RIDGE, N.Y. Thousands of people jammed the Scotts Corners business district Saturday afternoon for the second annual Pound Ridge Harvest Festival, reveling in the crisp autumn air and prompting organizers to declare the event an unmitigated success.
Its a perfect, glorious Pound Ridge day, said Ali Boak, a member of the board of directors for the Pound Ridge Partnership, which sponsored the festival. We had 150 volunteers already signed up before the event even started. We had support from the vendors, the restaurants and all the community organizations. Theyve been tremendous whatever we asked, they did it.
Money raised by the festival will help the Partnership to undertake an array of beautification projects throughout the business district.
This festival featured food provided by all the restaurants throughout the business district, games for the kids, demonstrations by the fire department, beer and root beer gardens, and slate of musical performances that featured the Fox Lane Rock Ensemble and the iconic 90s alt-rock band, Toad the Wet Sprocket.
Boak said having Toad on the entertainment bill was drawing people from all over the tri-state area and would inevitably help the festival top last years attendance of 2,000.
I see so many faces here from around the community, but I just met a couple of women who came up all the way from New York City just to see Toad the Wet Sprocket, she said.
Richard Stowe rode his bicycle all the way from New Canaan, Conn. to see Toad, one of his all-time favorite bands.
Im originally from Santa Barbara, Calif., which is where Toad the Wet Sprocket started, he said. I saw them back in 1987 in the clubs before they got a recording contract and Im Facebook friends with the lead singer. This festival is great; you couldnt ask for a better fall day.
Ken Witmyer came down from Danbury, Conn. with his two sons and met his sister, a Mt. Kisco resident, at the festival.
This is great; there are a lot of people here he said. My sister sent the link to the [Harvest Fest] website to me and we decided to come. The kids are really enjoying it.
In addition to the food and music, area civic organizations, business, and political candidates set up booths along Westchester Avenue to promote their myriad causes. Peter DeLuca, owner of Organic Landscape in Bedford was one of them.
My son just graduated from college and joined the business so we are looking to expand, DeLuca said, Its a beautiful fall day, and we want people to know there is a lot of things people can do now [to their lawns and gardens] to prepare for the spring. We are getting a nice response.
Boak said that this years Harvest Festival was better organized than last year and has attracted more sponsors now that businesses know what its all about
Our committee was doubled to 15 people this year and we had some awesome people on it, she said. A lot of work went into this. After last year, more people and businesses understand what we were trying to do, so as a result we beat our donations and sponsors by 200 percent, which means we raised more than $15,000 before we even started.
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