Corrales Harvest Festival

On the Sunday morning of the 2026 Corrales Harvest Festival, Amanda McKinstry led the pet parade down Corrales Road with her pony, Poptart, the new pet mayor of the village. The theme was “Circus Circus,” and the parade came behind her in circus costume. Emmy Martinez, 5, walked her bunny, S’more. Ella Ortiz’s cat, Stardust, rode in a red wagon, and Rosie was pushed along in a stroller. Mattix Ortega, 4, rode Hercules beside his mother, Krystal. Mike and Stacey Walker walked a donkey named Clover, a golden retriever named Dodger and a goat named Love. Veronica Navigato and Theresa Zortman came as conjoined twins with their dog Baloo and their cat Garfield. Nacey Freshour rode her horse, Aspen. Lemu, that year’s pet police chief, stood watch, and Vinny, a Highland cow, was named the village’s new pet fire chief. The day ended the term of Apple, a miniature pig.

The parade is one piece of a two-day festival that spreads through the whole village of Corrales, a farming village just north of Albuquerque, on the last weekend of September. The 2026 festival ran September 26 and 27, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is organized by the Kiwanis Club of Corrales Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit whose board and committee members serve without pay. On its own Facebook page the festival describes the event as staffed by hundreds of volunteers.

A dollar a vote

Poptart won office the way every pet mayor of Corrales does, by the dollar. Votes cost $1 apiece, or a $2 minimum online, and anyone may vote as often and for as much money as they like. “Yes, elections can definitely be bought in Corrales!” the festival’s election page states. Before stepping down, the outgoing mayor endorsed the method on the festival’s home page: “Your money can buy an election! Vote for your next Corrales Pet Mayor. Vote early and vote often!” Every dollar goes to Corrales Animal Services.

The 2026 ballot carried fourteen entries, among them Shotgun Valentine, Whiskey, Quincess Leia, Emmylou, Venom, Vinny, and Lemu “Da Baby.” Voting closed at 5 p.m. on Saturday, September 26, and the winner was announced before the parade the next morning. The offices change hands often. Going into the 2025 festival the seat was held by Chico Suave, a mini horse, according to Sandoval Tourism. In 2022 a dog named Peanut outpolled a pig, a horse, a dwarf Nigerian goat, a cat, two other dogs and a guinea pig. The Corrales Comment reported that “all other entrants have been assigned to various Village departments and put to work.” The 2026 police and fire chiefs both appeared on that year’s ballot.

The Corrales Not-So-Rapid Transit

Traffic through Corrales is restricted during the festival, and many of the village’s small roads allow no parking. Visitors leave their cars in designated lots near the tractor stops and ride what the festival calls the Corrales Not-So-Rapid Transit: tractor-driven hay wagons running from the Village Mercantile Store to the Old Church and Casa San Ysidro. A wristband, sold at any admission tent, is required to ride. The Corrales Comment counted ten tractor stops in 2024. Many people walk the route instead.

At the Mercantile, on Corrales Road at Meadowlark, birds and rabbits go before the judges. Poultry is shown in three classes: large breeds, bantams, and “scrappy birds,” whose winner is chosen by the crowd. Rabbits are shown as fancy and commercial, with a people’s choice of their own. The Mercantile also holds a preserved foods canning show, a farm animal expo, and the Kids Korral run by Horses for Healing, where children paint Breyer horses. At Top Form Arena, the horse group C.H.A.M.P. gives horse-drawn wagon rides, brings out various breeds, poses visitors with horses, keeps goats and donkeys to see, and helps children make ponies out of pool noodles.

On Sunday morning the Corrales Growers’ Market opens with its own hay ride stop and live music by Felix Y Los Gatos. The market’s festival page gives its Sunday hours as 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The festival’s Facebook post on the morning of the 2026 parade said it was open until noon. A farm tour takes visitors to three Corrales farms per time slot.

In shady La Entrada Park, which the festival also calls the Library park, the Arts & Crafts Show has gathered local artists and craftspeople for over 20 years. In 2026 the festival’s Facebook page said even culinary arts would be represented. Across from the park, the Village Government Office Complex holds the Village Marketplace, with business and nonprofit booths, food trucks, and a model train display. Chainsaw Nick carves there. He has been carving for 18 years and takes his inspiration from nature. Farther along, the Old Schoolhouse at 3650 Corrales Road hangs quilts by the Thimbleweeds Quilt Club of Rio Rancho and sets up a garden of scarecrows. Across the road, Frontier Market pours New Mexico food and wine tastings and holds horse demonstrations by its hitching post.

End of the line at Old San Ysidro Church

“Take the hay wagons to the end of the line!” the Corrales Historical Society tells riders. The wagons stop at the Old San Ysidro Church, 966 Old Church Road, an adobe the society says has some 200-year-old parts. It calls the church one of the most authentic and well-maintained adobe churches in New Mexico. During the festival the society holds what it calls the Historic Heart of Corrales Fiesta there.

Inside the church are antique farming implements, cauldrons, and a wine and cider press. Visitors grind corn and churn butter. Margarita Sexson makes chile ristras on both days, and the society describes her “fast and furious fingers.” At the Children’s Craft Table, children make musical instruments from simple materials. One table over, the Corrales Farmers Harvest Tasting Table sets out samples of the harvest. A touch-screen table shows historic photographs of the church through the years, of farming and acequias in Corrales, of how people have traveled through the village, and of its early artists.

Outside is the Pie Walk. It costs $1 to walk, or dance, around the numbered squares while music plays. When the music stops, a number is called, and whoever is standing on it takes home a homemade pie of apple, blueberry, peach, pumpkin, rhubarb, apricot, or another harvest fruit. The money goes to preserving the church. Children play corn hole and ring toss, and families pose in farm-scene face cutouts and on an old tractor. Docents sell notecards, books and tin ornaments from a stand called Shop in a Basket.

Across the road is Casa San Ysidro: The Gutiérrez/Minge House, a home built about 1875 and later restored and expanded by Dr. Ward Alan and Shirley Minge. It is now a museum, listed on the State Register of Cultural Properties and on El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. Its adobe rooms hold the furnishings, tools and art of New Mexicans who lived on a remote frontier. Its festival program is free, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, and the museum expected more than 2,000 people over the 2026 weekend.

The heritage artist market there in 2026 included Jemez Pueblo pottery by Carol Lucero Gachupin, San Felipe Pueblo pottery by Rosalie Chavez, Spanish Colonial weaving by Myra Chang Thompson, tinwork by Jason Younis Y Delgado, and retablos and bultos by Felix Lopez. Martina Rosetta baked bread and pies in the horno. Dave Sabo worked as blacksmith, and the Las Aranas guild spun and wove. Rio Grande Return had visitors clean wild seeds for habitat restoration and shape clay pinch pots to hold them. The Acoma Pueblo Enchanted Dancers performed both mornings. On Saturday the North Valley Tune Tanglers played “tunes from old Appalachia to NM,” and on Sunday Lara Manzanares, a Northern New Mexican singer-songwriter, sang. The Historical Society suggests carrying a horno loaf back across the road to the church for fresh-churned butter.

Saturday night on the soccer field

Festival Central is the Corrales Rec Center Soccer Field. By day it holds the Kids’ Korner, with four free bounce houses, free rides on El Toro Loco the mechanical bull, and a free climbing wall. Peter Menice draws caricatures and Desiree Kearney paints faces, each for a small fee. The field also has live music, a food court, and a beer garden, where Kaktus Brewery hosts Steel Bender Brewery, Holly Spirits, Nickle Brewery, Ponderosa winery and others under three or four tents.

On Saturday night the field becomes the Hootenanny. In 2026 the gates opened at 6:30, and from 7 to 10 p.m. Kyle Martin, billed as “the original rock and roll cowboy,” came back as headliner. He plays what his billing defines as “westrock”: “highly amplified western themed honkytonk style music played in a hard rock format with a heavy beat.” Food trucks parked just west of the post office. In 2024 the headliner was January Storm.

From hayrides in 1985 to a virtual Halloween

The festival began in 1985 with hayrides during the fall harvest. Over the years other farms, businesses and restaurants joined, and attendance grew from 800 to more than 10,000. The Corrales Comment dates the Kiwanis Club’s partnership with the village to around 1985. The festival’s mission is to show the village’s agriculture, merchants, artwork, performing arts and historic culture, and its proceeds support Kiwanis programs. One is Camp Kiwanis, which Sandoval Tourism describes as an all-expenses-paid trip for a group of children to a camp south of Gallup, covering food, nursing and activities. In 2024, according to the Corrales Comment, the club’s grant committee gave money mainly to organizations serving children, as well as to animal services and the fire department.

The festival’s website says the event “had been held continuously since 1985.” The Corrales Comment tells a different story for the pandemic years. The 2020 festival was cancelled. In its place, the paper reported, came the festival’s first virtual event, which ended on Halloween with a Pumpkin Palooza contest whose votes were still being counted. The organizers joked that “there are some problems with hanging chads and we have late voters still casting their ballots. Therefore, The Supreme Court has moved the voting deadline to November 7.” Key Club students from Cibola and Rio Rancho high schools ran the contest, which drew 31 entries from kindergarteners through adults. “They put their hearts and souls into organizing and promoting this event,” said Tony Messec, a festival veteran. That year’s pet mayor, Chip the miniature donkey, raised over $2,000. “All in all, for an event which none of the committee knew how to put together, it went better than expected,” Messec said.

The 2021 festival was cancelled less than three weeks before its September 25–26 weekend. The Kiwanis Club said in a statement that it could not control conditions at most of the festival’s sites in a way that would protect the children attending and “the kind, generous people who volunteer to put on the festival.”

The festival returned September 24–25, 2022, with more than 400 volunteers working hayrides along Corrales Road and Old Church Road, T-shirt sales, admissions, parking, children’s activities and clean-up. “We did great!” said Lane McIntyre, the club’s festival organizer. “Conservatively, I’d say we had 8,000 to 10,000 people over the two days.” He also said, “We’re just thankful that we are able to bring the community event back after the two-year hiatus caused by the pandemic.”

By 2024 McIntyre was chairman. He told the Corrales Comment that the most rewarding part was seeing people enjoy the event while the festival funded deserving groups. “It’s exhausting and takes a lot of planning,” he said, “but it brings me joy.”

The Monday after the 2026 festival, the festival’s Facebook page listed what had been turned in to Lost & Found: a bracelet, a woman’s debit card, and a small soft change purse with money in it and no ID.