Oatka Festival

Le Roy's perhaps biggest annual event opens today and runs through tomorrow.

It's time again for the Oatka Festival.

The festival is celebrating its 24th year. Since its start in 1989, it has become a community event that fuses fun, food, and entertainment with a friendly, family, small-town feel.

The festival site opens 10 a.m. each day, but the true kick-off is at 11 a.m. on Saturday with the highly anticipated annual parade.

Other activities include an arts and craft show, Back Yard Circus, live entertainment, musical talents such as The Good Knights and KnightnGals, fishing and duck derbies, 50/50 raffle, a library book sale, bounce house, rock wall, and more.

In addition to the festival events, the community comes alive with many other activities. A triathlon, 30K bike race, and a 5K walk/run will fill early morning hours both days.

Le Roy Farm Market will be on Saturday at Wolcott Street with a variety of healthy foods available for purchase.

The Le Roy House and Jell-O Gallery will be open for visitors throughout the weekend with free tours and a chance to try a Jell-O Poke Cake made by Scratch Bakery.

Also, the community uses the popularity of the festival as an opportunity to raise awareness for their organizations. Some groups specially design floats for the parade, and others hold various fundraisers to support their cause.

The Le Roy Nursery School, celebrating 50 years, is one such group who has a yearly yard sale to fund the school.

 "Le Roy Nursery School has a long history of educating children in Genesee County, and we depend on our fundraisers like the Oatka Festival Yard Sale to keep the school going throughout the year," said Heidi Dominiak, treasurer for the school year 2012-2013.

Household and children’s items, small furniture, and sports trading cards are some of things found at this year's sale. All funds raised go directly back into the school.

The sale will be from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday at 5 E. Main St., next to the First Baptist Church. More information can be found at www.leroynurseryschool.com.

Another organization, the Knights of Columbus, is hosting an all-you-can-eat breakfast from 8 a.m. to noon on Sunday, July 15. All money raised will benefit local charities.

This year is also Le Roy's Bicentennial. The town's quilt will be available for those who want to be one of 200 to take part in painting a square for it.

More information about the festival can be found at oatkafestival.org.

It was a beautiful day for a parade and festival in Le Roy on Saturday, and the entire parade route was jammed with people and the festival grounds were grounded.

Those who attended were treated to some real community spirit, great music, fantastic food and lots of fun.

UPDATE: I'm experimenting with an application that allows me to publish slide shows of photos. I'm hoping it will both be easier than my current message and improve the viewing experience. Below, you should see what looks like a video player. You can click through the photos individually, or on the lower right there's a button to open the slide show in full-screen mode, allowing you can see larger versions of the photos (which is part of my goal). I'm curious how this works for people.

Another summer weekend, another parade in Genesee County. This one in the photogenic setting of the Village of Le Roy for the Oatka Festival.

More pictures after the jump:

I stopped by the Oatka Festival in Le Roy briefly yesterday.  It was a great crowd and everybody seemed to be having a great time. The weather was prefect.

Thanks to Russ Stresing for getting us this footage of the Oatka Festival Parade.

Not much Batavia news on the front page of today's Daily News that wasn't already featured on The Batavian. In fact, both Batavia stories — one about GCC's $4 million capital project and the other about LeRoy's Oatka Festival — were on our site this morning and yesterday, respectively. (Check out the link on the right to the Buffalo News coverage of the Legislature meeting for more details.)

Inside, the Youth Page features a pair of articles on summer parks programs run by the Batavia Youth Bureau: the 2008 Batavia Summer Youth Program, which features weekly tennis activities. Call (585) 345-6420 for more information.

Tom Rivers has a nice column on today's opinion page about a local man's ties to an Olympic coach, and the wonders of the pole vault.

As always, we encourage you to pick up a copy of the Daily News at your local newsstands — Main Street Coffee has some, plus they have coffee. Or, better yet, visit BataviaNews.com and subscribe.

So... the whole back page of the A-section in today's Daily News is devoted to coverage of two out-of-town festivals happening this weekend: a Taste of Buffalo and the Sterling Renaissance Fest. Both are fine guarantees of a good time, I'm sure. I know I plan to head down to Sterling later this summer. Probably for the Pirate Revel. Argh!

But we're here to say that you don't have to go that far.

LeRoy, everybody's favorite world capital of Jell-O, will be hosting its annual Oatka Festival this Saturday and Sunday. Buffalo and Sterling are both Thruway stops away. heck, you can almost throw a stone from Batavia and hit LeRoy.

LeRoy's Oatka Festival, held on the banks of the lovely Oatka Creek, began in 1989. Its organizers did all they could to ensure the event would be "an old fashioned community gathering" — and they've kept it that way ever since.

You could say the festivities kick off at 11:00am Saturday with a parade down Main Street in LeRoy. That same day, you can expect no less than a backyard family circus, a chicken barbecue, brass bands and "cookie song writing for kids" — not sure what that means but it sounds fun.

And that's just Saturday.

Sunday will keep the music going — including a high school talent show under the tent. For the readers out there, the Woodward Memorial Library will continue its used book sale throughout the weekend. Then, of course, there are the crafts, the food, the 5K Walk/Run and the Vietnam Veteran's Duck Derby.

Click here to download the full schedule of events as it was printed in the LeRoy Pennysaver, or check it out on the Web site.