Apple Festival

Each year in late September, the small town holds a day-long Apple Festival to commemorate the old orchards which used to exist on Orchard Lane, greenhouses and nurseries from across the region donating apple seedlings for visitors to buy and plant in their own yards. Vendors set up booths with home made foods and soaps, clothing, gifts, and there are many games for children and adults alike, ranging from wheelbarrow races to archery competitions, shooting an apple off a post.

For weeks beforehand, the town nominates 'deserving' women of its choice, casting their ballots, and on the day of the festival, the year's Apple Queen is crowned with all due pageantry and rural fun. The Queen has no age category, but is granted the privilege to select a 'Consort' and a 'Court' to preside over, and is in charge of choosing games to entertain the festival for the rest of the afternoon.

She is also given pride of place at the head of the great Apple Feast table, where winning recipes from all over the county, voted on and chosen during the week prior to the event, are fed to attendees. The only qualification is that the dish must contain apples as an ingredient, and not simply a garnish.

Duck-Flinging Contest

No, not real ducks.

Every June, families with small children (and some without) assemble a trebuchet from whatever they please, not larger than a human is tall, to see who can fling an armada of floating rubber duckies from the west side of the river to the east. All ducks are marked with the names of their flingers, though there is no limit on size, or lack thereof. The flinger who gets the largest number of ducks over the water within five minutes of wielding their home made trebuchet wins!

Any ducks which don't make it are caught by netting strung from the bridges downriver, retrieved, and count as points de-duck-ted from their flinger's total score. It is entirely possible to come out of the event with negative points.

Children are encouraged to take the 'fallen' ducks to the "Duck Hospital" tent to care for them with stickers and bandages before bringing them home.

First Snow

While few remember now why it is done, it is a town tradition to go out en masse into the wilderness after the first snow of the year and pick a sprig of wild holly for each child dwelling in your home. The holly is hung above the front door's outer lintel, and it is considered poor luck indeed if it should fall before the winter's through.

Frozen Bread Guy

When the town heard about the Frozen Dead Guy festival out in Nederland, CO, they were thrilled -- and inspired.

Every year, now, the Frozen Bread Guy contest takes place in late April, once the snows are beginning to melt off of the foothills of the mountains. The winner of the contest decides the theme of town's Spring Fling Festival in early May. Themes must be PG-13.

After the first deep snow of the season, participants bake their preferred bread recipe using all-natural ingredients after registering with the contest organizer, creating massive bread-shapes sculpted to look like men, with whatever natural, biodegradable food decorations they desire. Fabric is forbidden, and any form of plastic or metal is right out. The harder and less edible the bread, the better it survives in moist snowy weather.

Then, they bury them in the snow above a specific line on Mount Salvation's western slope to freeze over the winter, leaving a slip of paper, cardboard or, more commonly, woodburnt wood to label whose Bread Man is being left there, and to write down their desired theme for the festival. Whichever bread guy "survives" the winter most intact wins the contest. The Town Council acts as judges, and consequently doesn't participate in baking the bread themselves, though the Mayor often tries. And fails. There is a running joke that Mayor Jacques "Jack" Bonheur, notoriously incompetent at anything related to producing edible food, makes meals which are only good for feeding pigs -- and wild animals.

Greased Porcupine Catch

Formerly done with greased pigs, every Spring, right around Beltane, members of the town gather together for a day of ridiculous slips and falls and very irritated porcupines.

Once, back in the mid-1960s, the pigs and piglets set aside for the greased pig event managed to get free of their pen, and, the banks being slippery due to a recent rain, each and every one of them proved that pigs can fly just fine -- and fall even better -- by slipping right on down the river and over the 'falls. The modern-day netting and ropes were added to the bridges shortly thereafter, to prevent the disaster from happening again.

Now, the event organizers weren't sure what to do. They had folks coming from all over the county, they were supposed to be picked up as part of a television program on local culture, and there they were, with no pigs on the day of the pig-catch.

They needed to use SOMEthing, and Danny Webb, he had a bunch of baby porcupines he was breeding up for the quills, for making 'Indian' jewellery. Danny donated his babies for the day, a lot of leather gloves were found, and the event was such a hoot that everyone agreed Webb's porcupines should be the new event.

To this day, the Webb family breeds porcupines for the town, and always sets aside a group of youngsters every Spring. Thankfully, part of their agreement stipulates that THEY are not the ones who have to CLEAN them...

Lords and Ladies Ball

Begun in the early 1800s by Mildred Miller, a particularly charitable member of an already civic-minded family, the Lords and Ladies Ball is a light-hearted event held by the riverside, originally on the land now claimed as the Mrs. Evelyn Miller Memorial Gardens.

As the story goes, Mrs. Evelyn Miller met her husband, Aaron Miller, while he was traveling abroad, attempting to escape a reputation for clumsy mistakes. He was a well-meaning fellow, but his life was anything but charmed. Not knowing of her own personal wealth, believing her to be the daughter of the painters she was living with, he courted her until he won her hand. The fact that he had stumbled upon a wealthy orphaned heiress AND successfully convinced her to marry him AND move to Tamarack Falls is family proof that, for the romantics, love can triumph over ineptitude -- or that sometimes, even idiots get lucky.

Evelyn, new to the family, was eager to find her niche, and she found that in flowers. She and Mildred became inseparable companions, and together, they put together the charitable affair which became known as the Lords and Ladies Ball. Each participant pays a fee to join, and receives a role to play for the event, as well as assistance with acquiring a suitable costume, should it be necessary. Fashion choices are strictly Victorian, though foreign garb from the same time period is acceptable.

Roles are, predictably, lords and ladies of various titles and properties, all of which are imaginary, some entirely preposterous, and all meant for good fun.

The event begins promptly at eight, and ends at midnight. It is always held in late May or early June, depending upon when the flowers are most lovely.

New Year's Day

It is customary, at some point during the day of January 1st, to make a trip into the centre of town to lay a sprig of evergreen upon one of the graves in the town cemetery. If your family is too new to be buried there, laying your sprig on an empty grave is acceptable.

The town hosts a small parade early in the day, crossing the southern bridge over the Tam to ride, all on horseback or horse-drawn carts, out into untrammeled snow to collect a cupful to bring home for tea, or to put in stew water, or soup. The "Wishing Ride" is popular with the very young and the very old, supposed to bring luck in the coming year.

In addition, the 'New Year Nail-Up' is a long-standing tradition -- and one whose origins are not discussed with out-of-towners.

Every year, the Town Blacksmith creates freshly-forged small black iron ornaments and decorations, cast and wrought alike, all through the month of December. Families are entitled to one ornament per family member, free of charge, and on new year's day, the ornaments are hung over doors, in windows, chimneys, over cribs or the beds of children, for protection. The You Know What don't like iron, you see, and parents are just as glad to keep them elsewhere. To outsiders, this is simply another silly superstition for good luck.

Pink Cow Run

Begun in the 1970s, the Pink Cow Run is the result of a Fry too lazy to properly dispose of his dyes.

See, Jeremy "Sundancer" Fry was really, really, REALLY into tie dye... and every drug he could get his hands on, but that's not important. What's important is the dye.

One day, high as a kite, he just tossed out his buckets of dye solution on some muddy grass out in one of the nearer fields, near where he had been hanging up his freshly dyed works to dry, not knowing that the cows had been let into that pasture earlier in the day. It being a hot day, a nice wallow in muddy water was just the thing -- and imagine the surprise of the family when, as the mud dried, their dairy cows developed a mad case of dye-itis, fur sporting a range of eye-searing colours.

The next day, out in the pasture, these brilliant cows spooked and stampeded thanks to the roaring arrival of a young teenage Fry's boyfriend on a motorcycle out of nowhere, breaking the fences and charging toward town...led by a very, very pink cow.

To remember the incident and perpetually embarrass Jeremy Fry, the family ensures to host a race EVERY year as soon as the weather begins to warm (so, May/June), where people dress up in pink with cow bells, fake horns, tails, whatever they choose. All proceeds are given to charity.

Spring Fling Festival

The Spring Fling festival is seldom the same from year to year, its theme decided by the results of the Frozen Bread Guy contest.

Held on Lazy Otter Hill and the Tenner Plaza nearby over the course of an entire week, vendors and guests from all around the county come to play games and, most notably, to take part in the Spring Fling itself, a dance where older women get to pilfer younger men for a twirl around the plaza.