Last year, Ellenville and Wawarsing residents alike sweltered and sweated in the extreme heat…the year before that, we thought our festivities would be rained out entirely, putting the kibosh on one of the year's most-anticipated events. But this year, like the proverbial Goldilocks, Ellenville got the weather just right.

Booths lined Canal Street this Saturday during the Ninth Annual Shawangunk Mountain Wild Blueberry and Huckleberry Festival, more commonly referred to as the Ellenville Blueberry Festival.

The day began with a proclamation from Wawarsing Town Supervisor Ed Jennings, who, with the town council's approval, declared Saturday, August 23, 2008 Blueberry Day, and he presented Chamber of Commerce President Red Roudis and Blueberry Committee Chairman Dr. Mark Craft with a plaque displaying the proclamation.

As the festival went on, festival-goers were entertained by several bands who took to the main stage in Liberty Square. Some visitors to the festival also took advantage of the rock-climbing wall that was provided between the Catskill Hudson Bank and Matthews Pharmacy. But no matter what part of the festival people enjoyed, many of the visitors to downtown Ellenville were heard to remark about how beautiful the day was, and how well the festival had turned out.

"This is a perfect day to be in Ellenville," commented Eric Aiese, the former Operations Manager for the village's radio station, WELV, who was visiting the village both for the festival and also for his ten-year Ellenville High School Reunion. "What a great combination of people, weather, and fun…this could be the greatest Blueberry Festival ever." And having been to all eight of the previous festivals, he would know.

A recently de-mustacioed Mayor Jeff Kaplan shared Aiese's sentiments.

"The turnout is terrific. It's a continuing crowd, and it's nice to see some good publicity. Everyone's having a good time. You can't ask for anything else than that. "It's a beautiful day to be in Ellenville," he added.

Over on Center Street, the Cultural Heritage Pavilion took advantage of the space usually reserved for each Sunday's Farmers' Market. Among the displays present there were booths from Cohen's Bakery (who, according to Samy Kentop who worked the booth, had by 2 p.m. sold out of 11 of the 15 products they'd brought to the festival), the Ellenville Public Library and Museum, and a display from Richard VanLeuvan, who was showing a scale model of a shack used by his family of blueberry pickers throughout the twentieth century. Entertaining the visitors to the pavilion were the folksy stylings of both Bob Lusk and festival-cofounder Marc Fried.

Pie-Tie Prompts A Taste-Off
This year's blueberry pie judging contest was presided over by John Adams, with the aforementioned Marc Fried as one of the three judges. Also present at the judges' table were Jennifer Schoonmaker from Saunderskill Farms and Randy Katz of Monticello, who was filling in for Eddie from Cohen's Bakery.

After a long deliberation process on the eight entrants, there was actually a tie for first place, which resulted in the judges having to conduct a "taste-off," where they would re-taste the two winning pies to determine which one edged the other out. In the end, the winner of the first place ribbon was Barbara Langstedder, second place went to Irene Morosky, and third was awarded to Linda Egan. Morosky and Egan had won first and second places last year, respectively. However, when it came time to award the ribbons, only Egan was on hand to accept — and to then dole out slices of her delicious award-winning blueberry pie to hungry journalists.

Fond Festival Remembrances
Town Supervisor Ed Jennings followed up his earlier declaration of Blueberry Day — declaring this most recent festival a success.

"Seeing all these people come into Ellenville kind of proves that we're not dead yet," he said.

"There were a lot of people there that I didn't recognize, not that I know everyone in town, but I think there were a lot of out of towners there," he remarked. Supervisor Jennings said that his favorite part of the festival was what made the festival so great in the first place: seeing all those people.

"I thought it was a great day: I thought it was a good crowd, and weather cooperated, and I think everyone had a great time — I certainly did," he said.

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