Ahead of this year’s Arrowtown Autumn Festival, running from April 24 to 27, coordinator Vanessa Williams is calling for Whakatipu residents to get involved in two unique harvest competitions.
To acknowledge one of the main reasons for the very first autumn festival — held in 1985 — organisers are once again holding a ‘Harvest Chutney Competition’, asking people to make the most of this year’s harvest, and potentially bust out an old, secret family recipe to impress the judges.
Festival coordinator Vanessa Williams says entry criteria include using locally-grown ingredients in their creations.
Each entry must include a small jar for sampling and at least one full jar to be given to Baskets of Blessing for distribution to local families, along with the entrant’s name, phone number and a list of ingredients.
Those winners will be announced immediately before one of the newest events in the festival, the highly-anticipated ‘Pumpkin Competition’.
Held for the first time last year, Williams says categories are the heaviest, ugliest, prettiest and ‘best creation’ — the latter of which will ideally involve pumpkins pre-carved at home.
She’s already aware of one entry — "a pumpkin called Donald ... I’m a little afraid", she laughs.
If people are attached to their pumpkins, they’re welcome to keep them, but Williams says they’d like to display as many as possible either on Buckingham Green or in the Athenaeum Hall entrance for the duration of the festival, and donate whatever they canafterward to Baskets of Blessing.
Entries for both the chutney and pumpkin competitions are to be dropped off to the hall by 4pm on April 23, if possible — the pumpkin judging, hosted by MulletMan, takes place on the green from 3.30pm, after which there’ll be an outdoor screening of Despicable Me.
Williams says at that event they’ll be giving out a prize for the "best-dressed minion" — if the weather doesn’t come to the party, the movie will be shifted inside the hall.
