A huge thank you to everyone on the Bowfest Board and all the community volunteers and sponsors who helped to organize and run another great community festival. The farm theme resonated nicely with the Country Fair tent and the entire day had a wonderful, positive, fun atmosphere. Myself, along with other BAA (Bowen Agricultural Alliance) volunteers were happy to help the tradition of the Country Fair tent running, as well as the longest consecutively running Bowfest tradition: the slug races, as well as the newest tradition: the human slug race! A huge thank you to all the participants, here’s a list of the winners in case anyone missed the announcements:
First place in the Lego contest went to Logan Elston’s creative, 3D toasted marshmallow on fire, which won the hearts and votes of the youth and adult judges, but a close second place went to the magnificent and large collaborative piece created by Pippa, Emily, Makai, Daxon and Jones. In third place was Zac Murray’s marvelous vehicles and character scene.
In the Biggest Zucchini contest, the first place adult entry went to Home Farm’s monstrous and well-cared-for 10.5lb zucchini. Second place to Scott Stevenson for his 7.1lb monster zucchini. Youth winners were Lochlan and Livea who grew 10lb and 9lb zukes. Second place in the youth competition went to Ryder and Kaija for their fantastic 5.1lb zucchini. Honourable mention to Charlee Clark for her zucchini that was so close to third place: 5.05lb.
The best photo contest was won by Dave Pollard’s beautifully captured moment of a bee in a pink rhododendron and the best Bowen cookie of the year was unanimously acclaimed by all the judges as being the thematically inspired chocolate “Cow Pies” created by Nancy Lee.
Honourable mention goes to Madison for being the first brave Human Slug Race participant, crawling her way to fame and winning a wooden folk-art slug trophy.
For the classic slug races with well-treated slugs being carefully placed on the race track, three races, instead of two, were held due to their perennial popularity. Races lasted 30 minutes and whichever three slugs were closest to the finish line at 30 minutes (or upon a slug crossing the finish line), were declared the winners. All three types of slugs found on Bowen Island (Banana, Black and Leopard) were at the races and the excitement was palpable, and one race required a photo-finish! One slug looked like they were going to win the race, and then turned around and doubled back to magnificently lose the race by heading back to the starting line and off the race track!
“Banany” looked like he was going to win, but then he left the track, right after “Lucky Racer” crashed into another slug and was eliminated, leaving Cole-Sam’s “Domino” and Caius’ “Loch” tied for the win of the first race. The second race was won by Henry’s “Slimy”, second place to Kellan’s “Bob” and third place to Colin and Chloe’s “Fred.” The third race had Nico and Leo’s “Turbo” come in first place.
The Country Fair tent was busy, with over 200 Bowfest Slug tattoos being put on people and all twenty-four lanes were filled for the three races with many kids and families and slug-jockey teams having lots of old fashioned fun.
Thank you to the Gooches for making sure that all slugs were safely returned to the forests after the races and coining the phrase “the family that slug races together, sticks together”… indeed!
Don’t forget: the Country Fair tent runs every year, so it’s never too early to start dreaming up your entries for next year. Many thanks to the community, sponsors and the volunteer Bowfest board for keeping this original Bowfest tradition going for the delight of the youth, and the young at heart, on Bowen Island.
