Hunsaders sprout 24th pumpkin festival

Even though Rachel and Alex Hunsader have grown up attending and helping with the annual pumpkin festival on their family’s farm, the excitement leading up to the event never grows old.

“Oh, here come the tents,” Rachel says excitedly to Alex, as a truck rolls onto the property. Alex grabs the keys to a golf cart and heads off to explore and tend to other grounds preparations for the Hunsader Farms Pumpkin Festival, which starts Oct. 10 and runs every weekend through Oct. 25.

Although the festival will offer longtime favorites, such as live music and shows, a corn maze, games benefitting local charities, a rock climbing wall and more than 100 vendors, among other family-friendly festivities, it will also offer new ones.

The Bello Nock Show and George Gilbert Comedy Magic Show are both new to the festival. It’s the first time in several years that Hartzell’s Crossbows of Death will participate.

“They literally shoot apples off their heads from behind their backs,” Alex Hunsader, 22, says. “It’s pretty scary. I can’t watch it.”

The Hunsaders also installed a track and purchased a train on which adults and children can ride for an additional cost of $3.

Kim Hunsader, who owns the farm with her husband, David, and their relatives Mike and Trish Hunsader, starts recruiting vendors and making other preparations for the festival nearly a year in advance. The farm, which has a stand that offers homemade jams and jellies, a petting area and playground, antiques and other you-pick produce, is a working farm that produces tomatoes, watermelons and other crops. But the festival has become a family tradition that now is in its 24th year.

“We try to keep it country. We don’t want it to look like a fair,” Kim Hunsader said. “We’re a working farm. This event is just something extra we like do.”