Category: Outdoors

Heavy athletics

‘Haggis’ toss, Scottish eats and music at the Highland Games

By Chelsea Spear
listings@hippopress.com

If the Tartan Army’s New England takeover was the highlight of your summer, you’re in luck. The New Hampshire Highland Games and Festival returns to Loon Mountain from Sept. 18 to Sept. 20. Now in its 51st year, the festival features heavy athletics, pipe bands, ceilidh dancing and sheepdog trials.

The Highland Games and Festival had an unassuming start in 1975.

“It was a clan picnic for those first couple years, and then just over the course became kind of a larger and larger thing,” program director Andrew MacLeay said in a recent Zoom interview. “It grew from strength to strength year to year. And now we’re up to close to 45,000 people over the three days.”

One of the main attractions for the festival is heavy lifting, which MacLeay describes as “the traditional big people lifting heavy things sort of stuff. The one that most people know is the caber toss, so that’s that large telephone pole, tree trunk essentially that people are tossing around. They also throw various implements for distance, throw a big giant bale of hay over a high bar, that sort of thing.”

The heavy lifting component of the festival inspired a new attraction for 2026.

“We’re doing a stone lifting competition, breaking that out from our heavy athletics,” MacLeay says. “People are going to lift, I believe, a 300-pound stone as many times as they can over their shoulder in five minutes. That will be a big show of strength and a nice test.”

Live music will also be a major component of the festival. Local favorites like the McCarroll Sisters, who first became popular through fiddle competitions, and Cassie and Maggie, a Cape Breton duo who have performed at folk music venues throughout New Hampshire, will be performing at the event. Several fife and drum bands, some from Scotland or the Canadian maritimes, will also be present.

NHSCOT, the parent organization for the Highland Games and Festival, will be offering Try It activities. If you’ve ever wanted to learn how to ceilidh dance, how to play the harp, how to curl or how to speak Scottish Gaelic, this is your opportunity. The festival will also host more in-depth programs about genealogy and Scottish cooking, if you’d like a deeper dive on those topics.

Those who’d like to sample traditional Scottish cuisine are also in luck. While there’s no build-your-own haggis booth, delicacies like Scottish eggs and meat pies will be available for purchase. If you want to play with your food, the festival offers an unusual activity for that as well.

“We do a ‘haggis’ toss,” MacLeay says with a laugh. “It’s a faux haggis, so that’s a fun competition in our Parade Square on Friday afternoon so people can chuck a bag of mystery meat back and forth at each other.” The festival will also be offering a whiskey and spirits tasting on Friday night and a traditional Cape Breton dinner for an additional cost.

While the Tartan Army has returned to Scotland, MacLeay is looking forward to an increased interest in Scottish culture after the World Cup.

“We’re definitely going to have some traffic cones around,” he laughs, referencing the ubiquitous symbol of the raucous soccer club. “We certainly have just received some calls from people who just heard about our festival or looked it up through having the Tartan Army down in Boston in the region. It’s great to see what we already kind of know in the Scottish cultural community, what we stand for and what we bring to the party.”

New Hampshire Highland Games and Festival
When: Friday, Sept. 18, through Sunday, Sept. 20
Where: Loon Mountain Resort, Lincoln
Tickets and program schedule: Visit nhscot.org. Weekend passes $116.26 for age 15+, $13.04 for children, free for toddlers, at the website. Single-day and single-event tickets are also available. Separate tickets are required for some events.

Featured photo: Multicultural Festival. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 26/09/17

Family fun for whenever

Space and sky

• The annual AerospaceFest at the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord will take place Saturday, Sept. 19, from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., according to starhop.com.

“AerospaceFest is the Discovery Center’s annual celebration of all things STEM and highlights the exciting ways local companies, universities, non-profits, and other organizations are contributing to science and education. These organizations will be spread around the Discovery Center’s grounds and exhibit halls, sharing their work with visitors through demonstrations, hands-on activities, and discussions,” according to the website, where you can find a list of vendors and participants. The Fest will also feature Big Joe’s Big Green Show; “Big Joe the Storyteller presents a show filled with multicultural tales about protecting the environment and making our world a happier and greener place to live,” the website said.

The Center will debut the new planetarium show “Encounters in the Milky Way” with free tickets available, first come first served, at the Discovery Center’s front desk, for screenings at 11 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., the website said. The event is open to all with a suggested donation of $5 per person, the website said.

Wheels & Wings

• Nashua Airport’s Wheels & Wings “A Touch a Truck Event” will take place Saturday, Sept. 19, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Boire Field with cars, trucks and planes to see and explore, according to the city’s SummerFun brochure at nashuanh.gov. The event will feature a horns-free hour from 1 to 2 p.m. and organizers will collect nonperishable food for End 68 Hours of Hunger, the brochure said. The event, which is free to attend, will feature fire trucks, police vehicles, planes, helicopters, DPW vehicles, electric cars and more, according to a post on Nashua Recreation Department’s website.

Outdoor movie

• Inside Out 2 (PG, 2024) will screen in Derryfield Park in Manchester on Friday, Sept. 18, at 8:15 p.m., according to a post on the Manchester Parks & Recreation Facebook page. BYO chairs, blankets and snacks, the post said.

At the museums

• Toddlerfest, the annual celebration of younger kids at the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire, 6 Washington St. in Dover, Tuesday, Sept. 22, through Sunday, Oct. 4, according to childrens-museum.org, where you can purchase admission for the Toddlerfest days. The museum will feature special events and activities geared toward younger kids, the website said. Tuesday kicks off with Early Birds Playgroup from 8:15 to 9 a.m. and then a storytime and sing-along with the Dover Public Library at 10:30 a.m., the website said. Other events in the first week include Try A Little Artists Class at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 23; Messy Baby Paint Crawl on Thursday, Sept. 24, at 10:30 p.m., and Science Friday on Friday, Sept. 25, at 2:30 p.m., according to the website, where you can find admission information. The Children’s Museum reopens after its annual fall cleaning on Saturday, Sept. 19.

• SEE Science Center, 200 Bedford St. in Manchester, will reopen after its annual break for maintenance and repairs on Saturday, Sept. 19, when it will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to see-sciencecenter.org. The center will then operate on its fall/winter hours: Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with some Monday hours on certain holidays and school vacations, the website said.

A world of food and music

Concord Multicultural Festival celebrates the community

Concord will hold its annual Multicultural Festival on Sunday, Sept. 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Keach Park, on Newton Avenue.

“It’s an annual festival with food and music and art and activities and community,” said organizer Jessica Livingston. “We come together every year to celebrate all of the different cultures [in the Concord community]. And when I say all, I mean all of the different cultures, not just the newer ones. We come together to celebrate everybody’s culture and share with each other through everybody’s favorite universal things: food, music and art.”

Livingston said one of the throughlines of the Festival, something that ties everything together, is the music.

“We have a whole lineup of music, like we always do,” she said, “but it changes. Sindy [Chown], our performance coordinator, is really great at keeping all of the favorites while also bringing in new types of performances. We get access to all different types of music and performances and dance from all over the world.”

For many festivalgoers the main draw is the food.

“We have commercial food vendors, food trucks, like most festivals do,” Livingston said, “but we also open [the festival] up to community members to share their food and sell their food.” She said that by partnering with the New Hampshire Food Bank, the Festival makes it fairly straightforward for community cooks to sell their food and still meet food licensing and safety regulations. “Our community cooks will go down there [to the New Hampshire Food Bank commercial kitchen] and cook and prep all of their food. It’s this big production that everybody loves. The cooks get to work in this great beautiful state-of-the-art commercial kitchen and work with the cooks from the Food Bank. There are chefs there, but then there’s also people working and training for some of their culinary programs. It’s a great experience for everybody, including the volunteers. I had a volunteer tell me one year that we should start charging for experience. It’s like a VIP kind of access to how food is made, but also you get to try the foods before they’re served.”

“We have a lot of community cooks this year,” Livingstone continued, “which is wonderful. We have a Jamaican food vendor this year; we’ve never had Jamaican food there before, other than some of the vendors do sort of Caribbean-style food, but this person is from Jamaica. We have the usual Nepali favorites like samosas [South Asian fried dumplings] and the roti [a laminated Indian flat bread]. And we have food from the Middle East and just a whole array of different types of food. People are definitely going to want to come with an appetite.”

Livingstone said that this year, even more than in previous years, the arts will play a big role in the Multicultural Festival.

“One sad thing,” she said, “is that we used to have the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts work with us and, as you know, [that agency] has all but closed, which is very sad for the whole state for so many reasons. But it was always great to work with them, because they were able to sponsor some of the traditional artists who continue to practice traditional crafts and making, like basket weaving and things like that. We have artists who will come and sell their work. We have, of course, [Iraqi painter] Saad Hindal, who is a gem in our community. He will be selling his paintings. We also have other artist-vendors who will be selling their handmade products — either handmade, specific cultural products or immigrant-owned creative businesses.”

Concord Multicultural Festival
When: Sunday, Sept. 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Keach Park in Concord Heights
More: concordnhmulticulturalfestival.org

Featured photo: Multicultural Festival. Courtesy photo.

Kiddie Pool 26/09/10

Family fun for whenever

Season finale

The New Hampshire Fisher Cats play their final stretch of regular-season games at Delta Dental Stadium in downtown Manchester against the Harrisburg Senators with games daily through Sunday, Sept. 13, at 1:05 p.m. — a game that features a Bluey meet and greet, according to milb.com/new-hampshire, where you can find details about the VIP package for a pre-game Bluey and Bingo event. Thursday, Sept. 10, at 6:03 p.m. the Fisher Cats play as the Manchester Buffalo Tenders with a Buffalo Tenders bobblehead for the first 500 fans, the website said. The game on Friday, Sept. 11, at 6:03 p.m. will feature post-game fireworks, and on Saturday, Sept. 12, the Fisher Cats play as the New Hampshire Space Potatoes and the first 1,000 fans get a Trey Yesavage bobblehead, according to the website, where you can purchase tickets.

Family fun

• Mr. Aaron’s Kids Music Fest takes place Saturday, Sept. 12, at the NH Statehouse on Main Street in downtown Concord from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. featuring the Mr. Aaron Band, Miss Alli, Friend Andrea, La La Squad and a kids’ music songwriting competition, according to Mr. Aaron’s Facebook page.

• The Currier Museum of Art, 150 Ash St. in Manchester, currier.org, will hold Community Day on Saturday, Sept. 12, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (with art-making from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) featuring free admission; tours of the galleries with artists from the exhibit “Radical Quiet” at 1, 2 and 3 p.m.; the New Hampshire Forest Society; hands-on activities and more, the website said.

• The annual Friends of Benson Park Family Fun Day is a special one this year, as the park is celebrating its 100th anniversary, according to friendsofbensonpark.org. The party happens Saturday, Sept. 12, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Benson Park, 19 Kimball Hill Road in Hudson, and admission is free, the website said.

Ducks and dogs

• Auburn Day and Annual Duck Race will take place Saturday, Sept. 12, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Auburn Village on Hooksett Road, according to auburnhistorical.org. The duck race will take place around 2:30 p.m. — earlier if all the ducks are sold, the website said. Racing rubber duckies cost $5 for one or $20 for five, the website said, with prizes for the first- through 10th-place ducks (you need not be present to win). Other happenings include a Black Hawk helicopter set up from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., demonstrations in the field behind the library, live music, a petting zoo, food trucks, vendors, and cookie and pie contests, the website said.

• The family-friendly, dog-friendly Wags to Whiskers Festival held by the Humane Society for Greater Nashua will take place Saturday, Sept. 12, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Holman Stadium in Nashua. The day will feature K9 demonstrations, adoptable puppies, entertainment, kids’ games and more, according to hsfn.org, where you can purchase tickets (kids ages 12 and under get free admission, the website said).

Ag in the spotlight

Hillsborough County Fair, with a focus on 4-H

The 68th Annual Hillsborough County Agricultural Fair will be held at the New Boston fairgrounds from Friday, Sept. 11, through Sunday, Sept. 13. Like all New Hampshire’s county fairs, it is an agricultural fair, but as Eric McCambly of Hillsborough County 4-H explained, the focus at this particular fair is more on agriculture than at some other, bigger fairs.

“It’s in New Boston,” he said, “which is a rather rural community. It’s a three-day event, whereas some of the other fairs around the state could be five [days] or an entire week long, with more that goes into them. It’s a little bit on a smaller scale.”

While other fairs might feature demolition derbies or classic cars, for instance, the Hillsborough County fair has events like rodeo events, line-dancing demonstrations, and a presentation from New Hampshire Fish and Game on bobcats. For an organization like 4-H, McCambly said, the fair presents an opportunity for members to have their work stand out.

“It’s a prime time for them to showcase their skills,” he said, “and … projects that they’ve been working on throughout the year and … demonstrate that knowledge within their realm of specialties. We are expecting 80 different entries all across the board in dogs, sheep, goats, chickens and poultry, cows, steers, rabbits. This also includes our 4-H exhibit hall, where kids do all kinds of projects. Maybe they did a STEM project for the year, maybe they did an art project that they’d like to show off, and it’s also an opportunity for our 4-H clubs to show the public exactly what they do.” McCambly pointed out that Hillsborough County 4-H sent a robotics team to a world championship in Houston earlier this year.

“Our fair is way more family-oriented than most of them,” said Michelle Tulip, the president of the Fair’s board of directors. “We have something for everyone. We’ve added a whole bunch of new events this year that we hope the families coming in will enjoy. And we are very agriculture-based.”

Tulip said people come to this fair from all walks of life.

“We have fans of all ages, I think, that come out,” Tulip said. “New Hampshire has a lot of fairs and they’re all great, but I think that ours not only attracts a different group of people, people get excited about it because it’s not overwhelming like some of the bigger ones. We don’t have the lines for the rides and the lines to get in the gate like you find at other ones. You can get great food. We have a ton of vendors this year. We do have rides, but not a ton. And there’s just a lot to see and do to keep you busy, but it’s not overwhelming. We do see a lot of repeat people, and we’re working to get a new crowd in, but we try to stay very family-oriented and very agriculture-oriented.”

The Fair’s website lists some events and competitions that will take place over the weekend, including gymkhana (horsemanship), horseshoe throwing, an apple pie contest, baking competitions across multiple categories sponsored by King Arthur Flour (including gluten-free baking), cake decorating, canned, preserved, and pickled goods, arts, crafts, sewing, needlework, quilting, photography and woodworking. As expected at an agricultural fair like Hillsborough County’s, there will be horse, mule and ox pulling. There will be food and craft vendors there as well.

Hillsborough County Agricultural Fair
When: Friday, Sept. 11, from noon to 9 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 13, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Where: New Boston 4-H Youth Center, 17 Hilldale Lane, New Boston
Admission: $10 for adults and $5 for military members, veterans with ID, and seniors 65+, cash only
More: hcafair.org

A few chores for the early fall garden

We’ve already had some chilly nights here in Cornish Flat, New Hampshire. Frost is still a long way off, but a few leaves are already turning and I’m thinking about my fall chores and getting a few done now. Let’s take a look at some chores you might wish to add to your list.

First, have a good look at your lawn. If you have bare spots or areas where your grass is thin, this is a good time to “over-seed” those places. You’ll be helped by temperatures that are cooler and rain that is usually more frequent.

I recently called Paul Sachs, a lawn expert and the owner of North Country Organics, a Vermont-based organic fertilizer producer. Paul suggested scratching up the area that needs help with a rake, sprinkling some seed over the area and tamping it down to ensure good contact with the soil. I use a metal tamper that does this well: it is a thick metal plate 8 inches square on a 4-foot handle. Lift it a few inches, drop it. Thud. Done.

Lawn seed needs light to germinate, so don’t cover your seed with soil. You can mulch lightly with straw to shade it and reduce evaporation. Seed needs to be kept lightly moist in order to germinate. In hot dry times, water daily. I generally use a “conservation mix” for the seed — it’s a good mixture of grass types. Paul Sachs told me you can over-seed through the end of October. I say do it sooner rather than later, preferably right after a rain.

If you haven’t harvested your potatoes yet, do so soon. If they have bloomed or if the leaves are yellowing and dying back it is time to do so. Try to avoid damaging your potatoes when digging. If your soil is loose and fluffy, you can tug gently on the main stem while loosening soil from around the plant with your other hand. If your soil is heavy, push your shovel into the ground at a 45-degree angle to get well under the plant, and pry upward. Potatoes store best unwashed and cured in the shade for a couple of days before going in a storage fridge or a cool, dark basement. Mice love potatoes, so make sure they can’t get to them.

Recently I planted another batch of lettuce, and I recommend you do, too. Lettuce seeds need sunlight to germinate, so you shouldn’t cover them with too much soil. A sprinkling of agricultural vermiculite (instead of soil) works fine. But if you plant seeds directly in the ground and you press down the seeds, it can form a little gully that fills up with soil when watering. I did that once this year and got only three seeds to germinate in a double 4-foot row. (Shame on me, I know better.) When I planted seeds in my waist-tall raised growing bed I was able to water gently and had germination in five days! I thinned out some seedlings and replanted, but I need to thin the rows some more.

Fall is a good time to move things around in the garden, including trees and shrubs. Scientists have determined that woody plants extend their roots after leaf drop in the fall. If you transplant now, be sure to water daily for the first week or so, and at least weekly after that, or more often if it’s hot and dry.

I recently dug a mature honeyberry shrub (Lonicera caerulea) and gave it to some new friends. It was about 5 feet wide and 30 inches tall. It had provided birds with nice snacks in early summer, but I got only a few berries since birds eat them earlier than I do, and I refuse to use netting.

I pushed a long shovel (sold as The Root Slayer) into the soil and pried up the soil all the way around. I tried to get the shovel under the middle of the plant from all four sides before gently lifting it and placing it on a tarp we used for moving it to my friend’s truck. Fortunately honeyberry has no tap root, which would have made the digging more difficult. Oaks (and most nut trees) grow deep tap roots making transplanting difficult after their first year and requiring severing the tap root.

This is a good time to do a little planning: If you plan to plant spring-blooming bulbs or garlic, buy or order them soon. Seed garlic often sells out long before planting time in October. Visit your local farmers market or gardening center to buy garlic now unless you plan to sacrifice some of this year’s harvest for planting.

Lastly, take a walk around your property and ask yourself, “Do I really like this plant? Should I pull it and replace it with something else?” I’ve run out of space in my garden, so I am doing that now and sharing plants with friends to make space for new plants.

Henry has been gardening in Cornish Flat since he bought his home in 1970. You can reach him at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

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