SCHUYLERVILLE — Saratoga Apple Orchard hosts a Cherry Blossom Festival, from Noon to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 8. 

The event will feature a farmers’ market and craft fair and live music all day long. There will be Mother’s Day flowers, gift baskets, 20-plus craft and art vendors, food trucks, artisan Tuscan pizza, barbecue, maple spun sugar, apple cider doughnuts and fresh apple and fruit pies, farm painted furniture, antiques, candles and more.

Vendors for the event include Specialties for Mom, Fancy Nails, Mulit Jewelry, Gift Baskets, Fresh Flowers and Plants, Muddy Trail Spices and Jerky.

Saratoga Apple Orchard is located at 1174 State Route 29 in Schuylerville. Phone: 518-695-3131. 

WILTON — Youth2 – Youth Helping Youth is teaming up with Toilet Paper Trio (toiletpapertrio.com), to jointly host their 3rd Community Care Pop-UP Event-“Toilet Paper Towers.”

Toilet paper is being collected to be donated to Franklin Community Center, Wellspring, Lifeworks/Soup Kitchen and Saratoga Senior Center. 

The drop-off will take place 10 a.m.-1 p.m. on Saturday, May 22 at the outdoors Farmer’s Market at the Wilton Mall. The drop-off will be completely COVID-safe; you don’t even have to leave your car.

Youth2 is an organization based in Saratoga made up of both youth and adults working together to improve the lives of people around the world. For more information visit www.youthsquared.org

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Franklin Community Center, a Saratoga Springs-based organization that provides basic necessities and services to individuals and families, received a charitable contribution of $10,000 from the Jennifer Crimi Sunshine Donor Advised Fund of The Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region. This grant will support Project Lift, an after-school prevention program for youth that operates within the Saratoga Springs City School District elementary and middle schools. 

“Support from partners like Dennis and Lynne Crimi and the Jennifer Crimi Sunshine Donor Advised Fund is critical to the continued success of our program. We are grateful for their generosity,” said Colleen O’Connor Potter, Project Lift Program Director. “Thanks to their support, we will be able to send approximately 60 children to over 250 weeks of summer camp. These kids will get to experience much-needed fun and exciting programs in safe and healthy environments.”

Dennis and Lynne Crimi established the Jennifer Crimi Sunshine Fund as a way to honor the memory of their daughter. Since 2005, the fund has given hundreds of children in need the opportunity to spend summer at various camps and other outdoor adventures. 

Franklin Community Center operates Project Lift in all Saratoga Springs Central School District elementary schools and middle school. The unique and comprehensive program has been in operation for over 30 years and places strong emphasis on positive youth development. The after-school program is free to the enrolled students and provides access to Franklin Community Center’s ancillary services, such as holiday assistance, school supplies, food, clothing, summer camp and other services as needed.

For more information regarding the program and services of Franklin Community Center, visit franklincommunitycenter.org. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Hannaford Supermarkets announced that each of its 183 stores donates or diverts all food at risk of going to waste, sending no food at all to landfills. 

The accomplishment, which is the culmination of a decade-long effort, makes Hannaford the first large-scale grocery retailer across its New England and New York market to meet this goal.  The accomplishment also highlights that Hannaford is an industry leader in managing food waste and in working to address climate change. 

Hannaford achieved the milestone with a multi-pronged approach focused on first preventing food waste through strategic product ordering and management at the store level. Hannaford associates are trained on how to responsibility handle food to avoid damage and exposure to temperature variation. 

Each Hannaford store also strictly follows the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Food Recovery Hierarchy, which prioritizes the rescue of surplus product for donation to food insecure individuals – generating millions of meals donated annually. Other key elements of Hannaford’s food waste diversion program include donations to local farmers for animal feed and food-to-energy conversion efforts.

Hannaford’s adherence to this process kept 65 million pounds of food waste from reaching landfills in 2020.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that as much as 40 percent of all food in the U.S. is wasted along its journey from farm to table, eventually ending up in landfills and generating harmful greenhouse gases. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. per capita waste has increased by 50 percent since 1974 and the average person throws away 250 pounds of food per year. 

For more information about Hannaford’s sustainability efforts, visit the website hannaford.com/about-us/sustainability 

Week One April 23-29:
Photo by Sue Clark

Week Two April 30-May 6:
Photo by Claire Marcino

Week Three May 7-13:
Photo by Sue Clark
Honorable Mention: Al Marlin

Week Four May 14-20:
Photo by Lori Barker

Week Four May 21-27:
Photo by Rich Indyk

Contest runs for 5 weeks.

SARATOGA SPRINGS —The Sisterhood of Congregation Shaara Tfille recently made a contribution of $500 to the Saratoga Nutrition Assistance for Children (SNACpack) Program. Based at St. Clement’s Church, SNACpack volunteers pack over 140 weekend backpacks full of child-friendly, nonperishable foods. Since 2015, these backpacks are given to children who do not have enough food to sustain them over the weekend. Sisterhood President Judith Ehrenshaft and Treasurer Carole Polacsek delivered the donation to SNACpack Co-founder and Coordinator Kerry Hall Trimmings.

For more information on The Sisterhood, please call 518-584-2370 or saratogajcc@verizon.net. For more information on the SNACpack program, please visit snacpackprogram.org.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — The Saratoga Automobile Museum presents the annual Spring Auto Show on from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 15 in the Saratoga Spa State Park. 

All cars, trucks and motorcycles are welcome. Vehicle pre-registration is $15 and day of registration is $20.  Pre-register with your car club and receive VIP parking. 

Show field admission is free for spectators, a $10 parking fee will apply, per spectator car.

Per NYS regulations, face masks and social distancing MUST be used and followed while attending. For more information, go to: saratogaautomuseum.org. 

Local, family owned and operated Thomas Pest Services owners Bill Clark and Sarah Thomas-Clark last month hosted an inaugural virtual walking event in support of Cerebral Palsy, with a month-long campaign to raise funds and awareness of the cause, in honor of their daughter.

“We couldn’t be more thankful to everyone who walked, participated, and donated to our event,” said Sarah Thomas-Clark, Vice President, Thomas Pest Services. “This cause always means so much to us because of our daughter, Riley, and wish to spread awareness for others who live and strive with CP.”

As part of the fundraiser, Thomas donated 10% of all sales for the month of March.

This, combined with their facebook fundraiser, totals nearly $7,000 to be donated to the Cerebral Palsy Foundation.

The Clarks’ daughter Riley was diagnosed with right side spastic hemiplegia when she was one and a half years old. While Riley has suffered impairment to her coordination and fine motor skills, Riley is a fighter, and has been attending weekly occupational and physical therapy to help with her condition.

The Clarks and Thomas Pest Services honor the CP cause not just for Riley, but for the whole Thomas team; a number of other employees at the company are also affected by cerebral palsy. 

To learn more about Riley’s story and how she has inspired Thomas Pest Services, check out www.thomaspestservices.com/cerebral-palsy-awareness.

Miss Always Ready, a 9-year-old mare owned by Three Chimneys Farm, delivered a filly by Three Chimneys stallion Palace Malice on April 13 at the farm as part of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame’s Foal Patrol Season 4. The newborn filly weighed in at 132 pounds with a height of 42.1 inches. This is the third foal of the season delivered on Foal Patrol. Both the mare and foal are healthy and doing well. 

Miss Always Ready, a daughter of More Than Ready out of the Dehere mare Miss Seffens, delivered her Palace Malice filly more than two weeks after her expected date of March 30. The foal is a full sibling to Structor, winner of the 2019 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. Structor was Miss Always Ready’s first foal. She has also given birth to fillies by Palace Malice (2019) and Gun Runner (2020).

There are four mares participating in Foal Patrol Season 4. Along with Miss Always Ready, the mares Miss Chapin (Mill Ridge Farm) and To the Moon Alice (Old Tavern Farm) have already given birth this season. The final mare in this season’s program is Janae at Safari North Farm in Versailles, who is scheduled to deliver her foal by Malibu Moon any day now. 

Foal Patrol is a one-of-a-kind interactive web project featuring a collection of live cameras where people can view real-time streams of mares and their foals. The live camera feeds will be available according to each horse’s daily schedule, set by the farm. For more information, visit foalpatrol.com. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — In honor of their 10th anniversary in April, local agency SIX Marketing has launched a “Share What You CAN” Can Drive to benefit the Franklin Community Center. 

Tin or aluminum is the traditional 10th anniversary gift, so Saratoga Springs-based SIX Marketing decided their 10th birthday would be the perfect time to hold a can drive.

SIX will donate all canned goods collected to the Franklin Community Center in recognition of the non-profit’s continued dedication to supporting local families both prior to and during COVID-19. 

To collect canned goods, SIX and two community partners will set up drop-off boxes outside their locations throughout the Spa City. Members of the community can donate canned food items at the following locations through April 30. Those locations are: SIX Marketing (445 Broadway), Battleground Fitness (426 Maple Ave.) and Spoken Boutique (27 Church St.).

To help spread the word about SIX’s “Share What You CAN” Can Drive, participants are encouraged to share a photo of themselves dropping off their donations on social media with the hashtag #sharewhatyouCAN. 

SIX Marketing has long been dedicated to humanizing their approach to marketing and helping others grow. The company began in 2011 as a marketing and PR firm, but over the years it has evolved into a growth agency. For more information about SIX, go to: SIX.marketing