Black Fox Farm and Distillery celebrates annual pumpkin festival
Fall is just around the corner, and Black Fox Spirits near Saskatoon is kicking things off with a festival celebrating pumpkins.
Black Fox Farm and Distillery, located a few kilometres southwest of Saskatoon, is hosting its annual pumpkin festival.
"We absolutely love pumpkins around here, [the festival] is something we've been doing now for seven years," Black Fox owner Barb Stefanyshyn-Cote told CBC Radio.
"Every year we look forward to planting [pumpkins] and watching them grow, and then even better, when we get to harvest them."
The pumpkin festival features family-friendly activities, horse and tractor rides and games like pumpkin hockey. Stefanyshyn-Cote said pumpkin hockey is a skills competition-type event, where players try to hit certain targets with pumpkins.
Participants in the free activities who win get a free pumpkin. Pumpkin soup, pie and donuts will also be available.
Stefanyshyn-Cote and her husband are third generation farmers. She said she didn't grow up around pumpkins, and guessed that might be why she's drawn to them now.
Pumpkins, she said, are a lot of fun. There's a wide variety of colours they grow in, they're "cheerful" and they make people smile.
"People like the look of them, I think they associate them with fun activities," Stefanyshyn-Cote said.
"Everything from fall and pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup, that's got to make people smile."
Last year, Stefanyshyn-Cote said the festival wasn't able to happen because the pumpkins actually froze.
She said this year, the weather looks like it will cooperate for the festival and the 13 varieties of pumpkins she and her husband planted are looking great.
