KEKAHA — “Stephanie Iona is under the tent, buying food for the Aloun Farms team that just unloaded about 1,200 pumpkins,” announced Laurie Yoshida of Corteva Agroscience during the 11th annual Harvest Festival at the Kekaha Neighborhood Center on Saturday.
A tent housed a variety of community nonprofits raising money for their respective causes.
As a part of International Credit Union (ICU) Week, which started on Sunday, Ursuline Munar of the Aloha Pacific Federal Credit Union Kekaha branch said their team was helping one of the food vendors, the Westside Christian Center Assembly of God, help with the food service because the theme of ICU Week is “people helping people.”
“The key is ‘community,’” said Dennis Eguchi, a board member of the Kekaha credit union. “Rev. Darryl Kua and the church want to send some youth(s) to camp, and they’re selling food to help raise funds for this.”
The Harvest Festival saw the sprawling grounds of the Kekaha Neighborhood Center dotted with free keiki rides and inflatables, the food tent, the educational tent and the free pumpkin tent shared by free Kewalo tomato seedlings being passed out by members of the Waimea High School football team working alongside Corteva Agriscience crew.
The Menehune football team, enjoying a bye from Kauai Interscholastic Federation play, divided into two groups for the service project. One group helped at the Harvest Festival that last year attracted about 8,000 people, while the other group worked on cleaning up the underside of the iconic Waimea Bridge that welcomes guests to the west side town.
“I got my pumpkins for the kids, I got my coffee from Ke Kula Niihau, now, it’s time to go to work,” said Sheila Bradley of PaperPie, an operation that used to be known as Osborne Books. “I’ll be doing the Eleele Elementary School craft fair this coming Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., too.”
PaperPie, known for its book sales helping the Kumu’s Cupboard in fundraising, was joined by a host of exhibitors, including the Kauai Fire Department whose arrival was delayed because of its involvement with the American Red Cross and Gay &Robinson in Sounding the Alarm program of installing, inspecting and providing fire safety instruction to residents of the Kaumakani camp.
The Hawaii Health Systems Corporation, Kauai Region capitalized on the community gathering to get its new health care professionals acquainted with the community, as well as promote its upcoming Kauai Healthy Living Fall Celebration at the Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital campus on Oct. 26.
“That’s the last of our free pumpkin giveaways. We have pumpkings going to The Shops at Kukuiula on Friday for the free giveaway from 3 to 5 p.m. with the free movie ‘Despicable Me’ following with snacks,” Yoshida said.
“On Saturday, we’ll be bringing pumpkins to the Grove Farm farmers market that will start from 9:30 a.m. These are the free public events. We have other places to deliver pumpkins to, but they’re private events.”
The Harvest Festival was started in 2014 as a way of thanking the west side community.
