Sifton Recreation is setting up for another amazing Harvest Festival next weekend with a variety of family fun-filled events. Bouncy castles, mini golf, life-sized dinosaurs, a magic show and a street dance are a few of the happenings at the 2nd Annual Harvest Festival in the town of Oak Lake.
Ken and Emily Jasper farm northeast of Hartney and they are bringing along their well trained and disciplined team of horses and providing around-the-town hayrides for the Sept. 9th event.
“We started doing hayrides about 20 years ago and my dad has been doing them for 40 or 50 years,” says Ken. He adds that they attend the Christmas parades and Hopper Days parades in Hartney and in the last couple years they have been attending and joining in on the parades in Reston, Pipestone, Oak Lake and Deloraine.
“This event they have at Oak Lake is quite amazing,” says Emily. “We did it last year and the number of people there that wanted to ride was unbelievable.” Emily adds they actually had to send people back because their loads were so full and had to shorten up their routes because they wanted to make sure everyone had an opportunity to ride in the wagon.
Ken says some horses are not as suitable for pulling hayracks as others. “We had a team ready in about a week this spring, but they were both real sensible horses.” He also adds that once he ground drives a new team, they are then hooked to a wagon where a lot of miles are put on before they actually make the cut to do a parade.
The Jasper’s say the number of people they can transport at one time depends on which rack they take. “We plan on taking the bigger one says Ken, as it should hold about 30 to 35 people.” Emily adds they are taking a different team this year. She says they are taking their Belgian Paints, Dolly and Molly. They had this team at Oak Lake for the Christmas time event.
Ken’s 88-year-old father, Bill is still involved and attends as many hayrides as he can and with this fall’s harvest festival, they are considering bringing two teams. Bill may bring his team of Haflingers to drive. This compact draft team knows Oak Lake streets, having drawn the wagon for last year’s event.
Ken is the fourth generation in this Jasper family and moved back to the original family farm 12 years ago. His father, Bill, continues to help with hooking up the teams.
