As the Lafayette Apple Festival grounds prepares to host people from across Central New York, the threat of weekend rain looms over head. The festival, which runs from October 12th to the 14th, usually hosted about 90,000 people annually. However, this year it might face some weather worries are the possibility of precipitation become more real as the week goes on.
Delphine Doupe, a Lafayette Apple Festival Board of Director member, said that they aren’t nervous about the possibility of rain. In fact, they’re used to it.
” It happened last year. We had rain the whole week prior, too. Saturday the whole day it poured, Sunday we finally got a break, but by then we were in mud up to our ankles.”
Doupe said that despite the possible rain the festival is prepared to continue no matter what the weather. They have indoor activities such as gift shops and an old-fashion cider mill. They also thought through other issues the rain might bring. Doupe said that they got over sixty port-a-johns just in case the ground water over flows their three septic tanks up here. free entertainment here in the gazebo and it and if the weathers really bad we have it over there in the hut
David Baker, who has been a Lafayette Apple Festival worker for over twenty-five years, said that rain isn’t actually the element the festival employees are most concerned about.
“What really gets us a lot of the time is the wind”, said Baker. “We did have significant wind over the weekend, but I have a crew coming from the tent people to get things rectified and get them back up where they belong”.
The festival is scheduled to go on, rain or shine. However, both Baker and Doupe say they hope the rain holds off so that they can show off their newest attraction, a hot air balloon ride. The new feature will allow guests to float up nearly one hundred feet off the ground, and then get pulled right back down to earth.
Other than the new attraction, the festival will also be hosting three hundred craft vendors and different competitions families can part take in. This year there are events like the apple pie contest and the scarecrow contest that festival goers can partake in.
