Harvest Festival

First Baptist Church of Laurel, 15000 First Baptist Lane, will hold its 5th-annual Harvest Festival on Saturday, Oct. 29, from noon-4 p.m. This community, family event offers games and prizes, climbing wall, inflatable slides, maze for kids, hayrides, popcorn, cotton candy, cookies and a free hot dog lunch. The festival will be held indoors if it rains. For more information, go to http://www.FBClaurel.com or call 301-725-1688.

First Baptist Church of Laurel, 15000 First Baptist Lane, will hold its 5th-annual Harvest Festival on Saturday, Oct. 29, from noon-4 p.m. This community, family event offers games and prizes, climbing wall, inflatable slides, maze for kids, hayrides, popcorn, cotton candy, cookies and a free hot dog lunch. The festival will be held indoors if it rains. For more information, go to http://www.FBClaurel.com or call 301-725-1688.

Ever tried honey ice cream? No? Well, if you're a fan of honey, you'll have to try it at the Honey Harvest Festival this weekend at the Oregon Ridge Nature Center in Cockeysville. There'll also be beehive demonstrations, honey extractions, wool-spinning, blacksmithing and even Civil War re-enactments. Kids can visit the petting zoo, take hay-wagon rides and get their face painted. Lots of gift items, baked goods and delicacies will be for sale. The Honey Harvest Festival runs 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Oregon Ridge Nature Center, 13555 Beaver Dam Road, Cockeysville.

Behold the honeybee. Tireless worker. Loyal to the homeland. Responsible for much of what we buy in the grocery store. That's a big burden for such tiny wings. Hundreds of visitors came Saturday to the Patuxent Wildlife Refuge in Laurel to pay their respects, stroll around flower-dotted lawns and buy honey and beeswax candles as part of the fourth annual Maryland Honey Harvest Festival. Thebees didn't disappoint, taking center stage for hourly demonstrations to prove how docile and industrious they are when compared to their unruly relative, the wasp, which visitors were informed "live to sting.

This weekend, the River Hill Garden Center will hold its third XTC annual Harvest Festival. And it will be bigger and better than ever, according to festival organizer Sally Robinson."

Andrew Wilson stands over a boiling vat of apple butter, dodging the spitting, bubbling contents and waving away bees as he stirs the apples and sugar with a long wooden ladle.A wood fire beneath the 32-gallon caldron makes this hot work, even on a cool morning. Now and then the heat sends the vat's contents exploding out the top and onto Andrew's arms, hands and unshod feet. Bees and yellow jackets, attracted by the promise of something sweet, buzz and swarm around him.For Andrew, a ninth-grader and senior patrol leader with Boy Scout Troop 235 from Churchville, such hazards are all in a day's work.

The Future Harvest Festival this weekend is no ordinary county fair. You'll find food and games, but you also may learn how to cultivate worms and grow garlic, enter a piglet-calling contest or build a scarecrow.Organizers of the first festival at the carroll County Agriculture Center in Westminster said they hope to bring together consumers, farmers and environmentalists from around Maryland for a fun and educational event. They expect about 5,000 people.The festival is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. tomorrow and Sunday, rain or shine, and includes workshops, exhibits, demonstrations and activities for children.

Whether you like to look through secondhand goods, shop for the newest craft, get a start on buying holiday gifts or really enjoy a good meal, this week is for you.The American Association of Retired Persons Chapter 2244 is sponsoring a Harvest Festival from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday at St. John Lutheran Church, 300 W. Maple Road.The festival will feature handmade items, crafts, plants, books and homemade cakes. Cupcakes and cake will be sold.Deliver donations to 424 Hawthorne Road, or call Virginia Gilligan at 859-1837 to have them picked up.*The Ferndale United Methodist Men will sponsor its annual Fall ++ Flea Market from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday in the church fellowship hall on Ferndale and S. Hollins Ferry roads.

Saturday offers a full day of activities. Begin your morning with a flea market, move on to a harvest festival and then cap off the day by attending a Halloween ball that night.An Indoor Flea Market sponsored by the Parent Teachers Association of North County High School begins as early as 8:30 a.m. for those who want to take advantage of a $1 early bird admission. From 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. admission is free.Eighty-five tables will offer a mixture of flea market and craft items for sale. Food will also be available.

Saturday offers a full day of activities. Begin your morning with a flea market, move on to a harvest festival and then cap off the day by attending a Halloween ball that night.An Indoor Flea Market sponsored by the Parent Teachers Association of North County High Schoolbegins as early as 8:30 a.m. for those who want to take advantage ofa $1 early bird admission. From 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. admission is free.Eighty-five tables will offer a mixture of flea market and craft items for sale. Food will also be available.

It's the first Sunday in November. Do you know how to turn your clocks back? It's also Samhain, a Celtic "cross-quarter day," halfway between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. It was celebrated as the start of winter and the new year. There were elements of a harvest festival, too, with large gatherings and bonfires, and a festival of the dead, with echoes in our Halloween.

Celebrate fall at the 43rd National Apple Harvest Festival in Arendtsville, Pa., 10 miles northwest of Gettysburg. The festival, created by the Adam's County Fruitgrowers Association, began in 1965 and includes something for everyone: more than 300 arts and crafts vendors, antique and classic cars, puppet shows, and pony and hay rides. Live music will be played on six stages. Festivalgoers can eat an array of foods, including barbecue, rib-eye steak sandwiches, apple butter, kettle corn, apple fritters and sweet potato fries.

St. Andrew's United to hold yard sale St. Andrew's United Methodist Church, 4 Wallace Manor Road, Edgewater, will hold its weekly yard sale from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow. Spaces are $15 for a 10-by-10 foot space, and $5 for tables. Reservations are suggested. Concessions will be available throughout the day. Information: 410-269-7671. Science society to meet Sept. 5 The Christian Science Society will hold its monthly meeting 5 p.m. Sept. 5 and every Sunday at 101 First Ave., SE, Glen Burnie.

NEW YORK -- One autumn day in 1621, newly arrived Pilgrims joined native Wampanoag Indians in Massachusetts' Plymouth Colony to share a harvest meal of thanksgiving, including roast turkey, pumpkin pie and an Indian-supplied delicacy, popcorn. From kindergartners acting in their first pageant to grandparents presiding over the family feast, most Americans know the story of Thanksgiving cold. And most of them would be wrong. It's time to talk turkey about Thanksgiving. While long immortalized in painting, poetry and song - and annually reinforced by chocolate turkeys, buckle-hatted Garfields on Hallmark cards and school re-enactments of the blessed banquet - the "first Thanksgiving" that gave rise to America's holiday tradition never occurred, at least not in the way most of us picture and understand it. There is no historical link between the harvest meal in 1621 and America's Thanksgiving narrative.

The Carroll County Farm Museum's annual Fall Harvest Days welcomes autumn with traditional harvest activities, crafts, food and entertainment. The two-day event will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and next Sunday on the museum grounds at 500 S. Center St., Westminster. The Mason-Dixon Historical Society will demonstrate shelling and threshing with old-time steam engines. Continuous on-stage entertainment Saturday will include Stillwater Band, Danielle, the Carroll County Cloggers and the WPOC featured performer, Rob Byer Band.

CENTRAL Westminster library marks 25 years The Westminster branch library will celebrate its 25th anniversary this month with special activities. The library at 50 E. Main St. was dedicated Sept. 6, 1980. The new branch replaced the Davis Library, a former Methodist Church purchased by W.H. Davis for a community library. Activities will include: 1980 Trivia Contest, Sept. 1-15: Completed contest forms, available at the library, must be turned in by closing time Sept. 15. Those with most correct answers will be eligible for a drawing for a DVD player.

It's all the buzz. This weekend's Honey Harvest Festival will surely have folks making a beeline to the Oregon Ridge Nature Center in Cockeysville. The 23rd annual festival - a celebration of all things honey - features an array of bee-related events and demonstrations, sweet honey treats and gifts for sale, as well as various children's activities. Visitors can watch as members of the Central Maryland Beekeepers Association conduct live demonstrations with beehives, extract honey, dip beeswax candles and even make mead (honey wine)

As night falls and trick-or-treating children transform into ghosts, goblins, witches and monsters, some families will opt for costumes with a more biblical bent.For evangelical Christians, Halloween has become the holiday to shun.Some ignore it altogether, but increasingly churches are offering alternative celebrations to a day they believe encourages witchcraft, Satanism and the occult."Halloween has been exploited and commercialized so that devils and witches and ghosts have become the predominant theme, and we want to do something more positive," said the Rev. Leah White, administrator of New Psalmist Christian School, where an Octoberfest celebration was held yesterday.