Hi everyone! Happy November! In today’s blog, I’m going to talk about the activities that Amherst held to celebrate fall (and the bicentennial). Please email me at sgoldsmith24@amherst.edu with any questions!
Farm Fest
The first autumnal event at Amherst was Farm Fest: an annual celebration of fall put together by the Book and Plow Farm. Farm Fest was wonderful – there was live music, flower and vegetable picking, t-shirts, and great food. My roommate and I went right at the beginning of the event, and enjoyed eating apple-blueberry crisp and apple ice cream, and listening to music. We also picked some flowers and made a little bouquet in a water bottle that we put on our windowsill.
Bicentennial Celebration/Fall Fest
This year is Amherst’s bicentennial, and while the College had initially planned to spread celebrations throughout the year, the pandemic rendered them unable to have any big events in the spring. Therefore, Amherst pulled out the stops for one big day of celebrating our 200th year. In non-bicentennial years, there is a Fall Fest on a Saturday in October where students can eat good food, listen to music, and carve pumpkins. This year, typical Fall Fest activities were folded into the bicentennial celebration.
In the afternoon, there were 1800s/New England/carnival-themed activities, including horse carriage rides, a Ferris wheel, sack races, and lots of fall carnival food. Later in the day, there were carnival games on the First-Year Quad, and Biddy (our president) came onto the main quad on horseback, in a reenactment of the founding of Amherst 200 years ago. Amherst commissioned an incredible cake of South, Amherst’s first building.
Later that night, Grammy award-winning artist Common put on an incredible concert. Admittedly, I had never heard any of his songs before the concert, but he was a great performer and my friends and I enjoyed it. After the concert, there was a fireworks display, which was impressive. I’ve never loved fireworks, so that was probably my least favorite part of the day, but it was still a great way to end the bicentennial celebration.
The bicentennial cake!
Halloween
To round out the fall events, we have Halloween! Halloween at Amherst started with pumpkin painting/decorating in the Science Center on 10/28, and trick-or-treating across campus on 10/29. On 10/30, there was a big party held in the Powerhouse, one of Amherst’s event spaces. Lastly, on 10/31, the staff at the COVID testing center gave everyone a little testing vial filled with candy, which I thought was cute.