OAKVILLE — The 11-year-old redhead wrinkled her nose.
"Zucchini is disgusting," she said. "Zucchini makes me barf."
Cayce Hitzroth of Oakville is certainly not the only child in the world who doesn't like zucchini, but she and several dozen other children happily set aside their hatred of the vegetable on Saturday and joined their parents for the seventh annual Oakville Zucchini Jubilee.
Children and adults enjoyed the day of squash-related events including a zucchini bake-off, a zucchini rod run, a zucchini obstacle course and a biggest zucchini contest. The heaviest zucchini was a monster green at 15 pounds. Kaleb Knee had the longest zucchini at 26 inches.
"I don't like zucchini, but I like all the games," Knee said of the jubilee.
The Rochester boy had the help of family friend Bertha Cooper in growing Oakville's longest zucchini. In fact, he grew it in her garden.
"We planted it in the second week of June and just picked it this morning," Cooper said. "I thought about the contest here and just left it on the plant to grow as big as it wanted to."
The zucchini obstacle course was a favorite among the kids. Randy Caberly, Oakville, said he tries to do something a little different with the course each year. This year, the children used an oar to push a yellow zucchini to one side of a string tied to two trees, then they had to climb inside of a barrel. Next they had to pick up a giant zucchini and poke their head through every space between rungs on a horizontal ladder. To finish, they had to throw a ball at the barrel and touch Caberly's zucchini hat.
Hitzroth, standing in line for the obstacle course, shouted encouragement to a younger child struggling with the long oar.
"Hit it like you hit your little brother," she said.
Jerry Hemrich, pastor of the Methodist Church in Oakville and in Rochester, stood inside the picnic shelter and helped serve food. Among the foods for sale at the jubilee were fried zucchini, buttered corn on the cob and hot dogs. Hemrich said he hadn't seen any children eating the fried zucchini, but the youngsters were filling up on the corn and hotdogs.
Hemrich had a confession of his own.
"I don't like zucchini myself," he said. "But the church likes it when I come to events like this, and doing stuff like this is what I really enjoy. Getting to know the people better has been wonderful."
Janice Howell, organizer of the jubilee, said she doesn't know really why Oakville chose zucchini as the theme for its fall festival, but she ventured a guess.
"Because it's unique," she said. "And because everybody always has a lot of zucchini and we wanted to be civic minded and have a place where people could bring it. Wasn't that nice of us?"
The Zucchini Jubilee is sponsored every year by the Oakville Chamber of Commerce and takes place in the Oakville city park. Whether the participants enjoy eating vegetables is not relevant. People seem to enjoy the chance to get together with their neighbors, buy cotton candy, browse the venders along the street outside of the park and play games.
And there were even a few kids at the jubilee this year who like to eat zucchini.
Colby Heinkey, 14, of Chehalis, and Cody Miracle, 8, of Rochester, said they love it. The two boys were busy at one of the craft tables, carving faces into zucchini and drawing pictures. They said they can't wait to come back to Zucchini Jubilee next year.
Dian McClurg covers health and rural south and west Lewis County for The Chronicle. She may be reached at 807-8239, or by e-mail at dmcclurg@chronline.com.
