Moses Lake Ag Parade coming with s'mores on Friday
Charles H. Featherstone/Columbia Basin Herald An employee of Northland Communications helps put together the company’s Ag Parade float on Wednesday.
MOSES LAKE — The early darkness and frosty cold of winter mean that it’s time again for the Ag Parade, the city ‘s yearly celebration of farming and its agricultural heritage.
This Friday’s parade, which begins at 7 p.m., is the 24th annual celebration of the harvest and of agriculture in the Columbia Basin, according to Brandon Nicholas, the executive director of the Moses Lake Business Association, sponsor and organizer of the event.
The parade will wind down a mile-long route beginning in the parking lot of the Surf n’ Slide Water Park at Fifth Avenue and Dogwood, down Third Avenue to Division, and then back up Fifth.
Warren and Judy Henninger, long-time farmers and owners of AgWorld Support Services, a company that assists farmers and food processors with agricultural inspections, will be parade grand marshals.
“My husband Warren has a heart for agriculture,” Judy Henninger said. “He’s always had a heart.”
Henninger said her husband grew up on a Pennsylvania potato farm, got at an agronomy degree from Penn State, and was encouraged by his father to leave Pennsylvania because there wasn’t any future in potato farming there.
“He’s been in potatoes his whole life,” she said.
Henninger said she and her husband are also very proud to have been this year’s Ag Parade grand marshals.
“It is a very nice honor to have been given that, to represent such a fine industry, to be a part of the parade,” she said.
Nicholas said there will be a street party in Sinkiuse Square and along Third Avenue in downtown beginning at 5 p.m., complete with music, hot chocolate and a fire pit to make s’mores.