The Maple Festival normally welcomes people from all over the country every year. This year, organizers needed to make some changes to ensure a safe event, which made the streets of St. Albans a little quieter than usual on Maple Festival’s weekend. “It’s something that makes you feel connected to the people here, so it’s been super weird to not have that for the past two years,” said downtown shop employee Ada Shookenhoff. On a normal Maple Festival weekend, Ada Shookenhoff would be found in the park, enjoying a maple frosted doughnut with friends. This year, she hoped participating in the window decorating connect would help bring back a sense of community. “It was really fun to talk to people while I was painting the windows, just to have people walk by and talk to me while I was working on that. That little connection with others was really nice,” she said about her experience painting a window at As the Crow Flies. It’s a connection a lot of folks have missed since the festival was cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic. “We wanted to do something this year. We don’t want anybody to forget our Vermont sugar makers and our liquid gold here. So, we did our best, and we gave it a shot,” said Maple Festival co-chair Cecile Branon. Individual venues sold special maple products, the festival held a picture contest, and also, a window decorating contest. All of this in hopes people could have a maple experience while welcoming them to explore the area of downtown St. Albans. “We were trying to push the traffic for families to go walk downtown, take a look at these windows, vote for your favorites,” said Branon. Ada Shookenhoff said the process worked. “There’s a lot of people who aren’t from around here, who were here enjoying the windows… So that’s kind of refreshing and it gives me some hope,” she said.The event’s co-chair also noted that even when the event gets back to normal next year, the window decorating contest could stick around, as it was a way to get the community involved in Maple Festival. She gave her congratulations to the shops that won the “people’s choice” vote for their windows — Rail City Salon won first place.
The Maple Festival normally welcomes people from all over the country every year. This year, organizers needed to make some changes to ensure a safe event, which made the streets of St. Albans a little quieter than usual on Maple Festival’s weekend.
“It’s something that makes you feel connected to the people here, so it’s been super weird to not have that for the past two years,” said downtown shop employee Ada Shookenhoff.
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On a normal Maple Festival weekend, Ada Shookenhoff would be found in the park, enjoying a maple frosted doughnut with friends. This year, she hoped participating in the window decorating connect would help bring back a sense of community.
“It was really fun to talk to people while I was painting the windows, just to have people walk by and talk to me while I was working on that. That little connection with others was really nice,” she said about her experience painting a window at As the Crow Flies.
It’s a connection a lot of folks have missed since the festival was cancelled in 2020 because of the pandemic.
“We wanted to do something this year. We don’t want anybody to forget our Vermont sugar makers and our liquid gold here. So, we did our best, and we gave it a shot,” said Maple Festival co-chair Cecile Branon.
Individual venues sold special maple products, the festival held a picture contest, and also, a window decorating contest. All of this in hopes people could have a maple experience while welcoming them to explore the area of downtown St. Albans.
“We were trying to push the traffic for families to go walk downtown, take a look at these windows, vote for your favorites,” said Branon.
Ada Shookenhoff said the process worked.
“There’s a lot of people who aren’t from around here, who were here enjoying the windows… So that’s kind of refreshing and it gives me some hope,” she said.
The event’s co-chair also noted that even when the event gets back to normal next year, the window decorating contest could stick around, as it was a way to get the community involved in Maple Festival.
She gave her congratulations to the shops that won the “people’s choice” vote for their windows — Rail City Salon won first place.
