Under the trees, the aroma of caramel popcorn, candied apples and hay bales wafts in the fall air. Mud covered tractors pull cartloads of people on a hayride to an enormous pumpkin patch. Connecting locals to their community, the Tolay Fall Festival highlights the best of Sonoma County’s agriculture and outdoors in the autumn season.
During the week, schools from across the county visit and explore the Festival at the Tolay Lake Regional Park.  During the two weekends the event is open to the public.
Sonoma County purchased this ranch in 2005 from the Cardoza’s, who had a big fall festival every year, said John Ryan, coordinator of the volunteers at the festival. When the county decided to purchase the ranch and transform it into a Regional Park, the public wanted to continue that tradition. “The Tolay Festival started in 2006. We steered it, trying to keep it still fun but more toward the agricultural heritage, education and that sort of thing,” Ryan said.
A long road transitioning from badly paved asphalt to dirt leads down into the valley where the festival takes place. Entering the park, festival goers pass a maze of hay bales. The maze is two bales tall and wide for wheelchairs.  Beyond the maze is a raceway where there is constant hopping in potato sacks and galloping hobby horses racing to the finish line.  Behind the raceway is a scarecrow building station where the scarecrows are turned into park ranger manikins equipped with a ranger hat and name.
Up the trail from the potato sack races is a series of craft village booths. The booths offer lessons in making corn husk dolls.  To make these dolls you dry corn husks and weave them together to create a handmade, unique doll.  There is also a wool carding booth, where volunteers teach how to turn sheep’s wool into yarn.  This is teaching not only children but adults how clothes are made and where things come from.  There is also the option to dye the wool. Next to the wool dying station volunteers teach how to make candles.  The last booth has a nest of baby chicks on display.
One popular activity at the festival is the pumpkin seed spitting contest, where all the competitors line up at the starting point and spit the seeds as far as they can. The furthest seeds are marked with bales of hay.
The night-time creatures’ barn is the Tolay Festival’s interpretation of a haunted house.  The barn is filled with nocturnal animals like snakes, owls, tortoises and scorpions.  The scorpions have a black light on them to show their luminescent features.  The owls are not encaged but on the arms of volunteers and perched throughout the barn. “They had a haunted house in this large barn, and being a parks department we want to put our public educational twist to it,” said Jeff Taylor, a ranger for Sonoma County Regional Parks.
The entry fee is $4 for adults and $1 for ages 12 and under.  “Once you’re in here unless you buy a pumpkin or buy food everything is free.  The hayride, farm crafts, seed spitting and all those activities are free,” Ryan said.  The event is for the community by the community, bringing in more than 150 individual volunteers, 30 to 40 of whom are new at the Tolay festival this year. “We raise some money, but there definitely are costs. It’s not necessarily an event where we make money,” Ryan said.
The event’s biggest day so far brought in 2,000 people, Oct 16. The Tolay Fall Festival is the Sonoma County Regional Parks biggest event of the year. For more information about the parks visit http://www.Sonomacountyparks.org.