The Bakery has hosted Night of 100 Pumpkins for 30 years! We supply the tents and tables, facilitate the judging, solicit prizes from local businesses and host a Halloween night party with live music, free pumpkin bread, hot cider and cocoa. But the real work is what you all do, carving and decorating incredible works of temporary art using pumpkins.
This year, of course, is special. We cannot host our usual event at The Bakery because we cannot insure safe social distancing. But people still want to celebrate Halloween!
So this year, The Bakery is teaming up with the New Paltz Youth Program, Office for Community Wellness, New Paltz Rescue Squad, New Paltz Safe Coalition, New Paltz Police Department, parks and recreation, the town and village and the school district to present New Paltz with a safe and decentralized Halloween event. The plan is still being worked on, but it will include several locations where volunteers will distribute candy safely via grab-and-go locations, a youth window painting art project, selfie photo stations and much more.
The plan is that pumpkins can be dropped off at The Bakery on Friday, October 30 just like always. On Halloween, we will set up some of them on tables at The Bakery, but we will also bring your pumpkins to tables at each of the other sites so that the whole community will see them but no site will become crowded and we will get people moving through the whole village. Each site will have volunteers to insure that people move through safely and observe Covid guidelines.
There will be no judging or prizes this year and the event will take place during daylight hours. We hope that you will participate by carving or decorating your pumpkins and bringing them to The Bakery. Nothing is normal this year, but we can still celebrate Halloween and give back to our community with a great display of creative Halloween pumpkins. As always, every pumpkin artist gets a free pumpkin cookie!
Thank you and Happy Halloween!
David Santner
The Bakery, New Paltz