A young contestant downs some pumpkin pie at last year’s Harvest Festival. File Photo

The city of Sweet Home’s third annual Harvest Festival will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday.

The community’s first satellite Walk for the Cause/Run for a Life event will begin at 8:30 a.m., with registration from 7:30 a.m. to 8:25 a.m., at the Sankey Park bandstand in conjunction with the main Walk for the Cause event in Albany.

The Walk for the Cause event is run through Soroptimist International of Albany. It is used to raise funds to help fight breast cancer and other diseases affecting women. All of the proceeds remain in the area.

“We found a lot of community members were leaving town for Albany to go on the walk,” said Edene Flierl, assistant planner and festival organizer. “We’re going to have it start at the Harvest Festival and end at the Harvest Festival.”

The Harvest Festival will be similar to last year’s, with free activities, such as tree climbing provided by the Pacific Tree Climbing Institute, horse-drawn hay rides, face painting, pumpkin painting, life music featuring Super Trout of Eugene and children’s games.

The event gave away 250 pumpkins last year, said Byron Wolfsong, code enforcement officer and event organizer. Children can paint them and take them home.

Games will include everything from a pumpkin pie walk and sack races to bobbing for apples, Flierl said, and the traditional free cotton candy and apple cider will be available.

The event also will include the weekly Farmer’s Market and arts and crafts booths.

“It worked well last year,” Flierl said. The event will have 32 vendors, including merchants from Creswell, Albany and the local community. Vendors will include jewelry, leather items, wood-burned postcards and pictures, country paintings and chainsaw carvings and baskets full of items made in Oregon.

The Sweet Home Tree Commission will sell trees, and Lorna Klapan, a licensed masseuse, will provide massages after the walk.

Performing around the festival will be jugglers and a barbershop quartet.

Somewhere between 500 and 600 people attended last year’s festival, Flierl said.

Wendy Younger, executive assistant to the city manager and Walk for the Cause organizer, is looking for a strong turnout, and she stressed the importance of arriving before 8:30 a.m. when the Walk for the Cause program starts. The cost is $20. Checks should be written to Soroptimist International of Albany.

Breast cancer survivor Cynde Burford will speak, and Mayor Craig Fentiman will kick off the walk itself.

“We did the satellite here in the community to raise awareness in Sweet Home, for people who wouldn’t drive to Albany,”
Younger said. “Every three minutes a woman in the United States learns she has breast cancer.”

According to the American Cancer Society, 192,370 women will develop breast cancer in a year, Younger said. Some 40,170 will die. Breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer affecting women, behind skin cancer.

Raising awareness is a key to early detection, she said, and early detection improves chances for survival.

For information about Walk for the Cause, call Younger at 367-8969.

For information about the Harvest Festival or to volunteer, call Flierl or Wolfsong at 367-8113.