Best bets for the weekend

Psst. Flip your calendar to October. It's here, and our weather has finally caught up. So enjoy little opportunities that come for only a few weeks each year: Soak up heaping eyefuls of fall color. Kick dry leaves along the sidewalk. Breathe deep of that musty perfume that comes only from decaying maple leaves on shivery mornings. More ideas? Right here:

Harvest time and the witching month: Farmers in Skagit County (www.festivaloffamilyfarms.com) and Pierce County (www.piercecountywa.org/harvestfest) and on Whidbey Island (whidbeyfarmtour.wordpress.com) welcome visitors during farm tours this weekend, and it's also time for corn mazes, pumpkin patches and a new spin on things, pumpkin hurling, using medieval-style trebuchets, like something out of a "Lord of the Rings" battle scene, to fling pumpkins hundreds of feet (www.festivalofpumpkins.org). You'll also find a haunted house (the kind sponsored by a radio station, with young ghouls who do their best to scare the bejeebers out of you) (kube93.com) and a Halloween Costume Fashion Show featuring — quick intake of breath — the one-and-only Elvira (www.costumefashionshow.com). Don't miss it or you'll say boohoo. See "Harvest Season Events" in our Weekend Calendar.

In a rut: Take a train from Tacoma's Freighthouse Square to Northwest Trek wildlife park to witness the mating season for elk, moose and their significant others. See www.nwtrek.org.

History by candlelight: Take the Magical Candlelight Tour as costumed re-enactors portray a typical autumn night in 1857 at Fort Nisqually Living History Museum in Tacoma (www.fortnisqually.org).

Produce power: You know those zucchinis that got away from you and grew three sizes too big? Now there's a practical application for them. Stick on wheels and enter the Great Zucchini Race. It happens Sunday on Bainbridge Island (www.bainbridgedowntown.org).

Festive fall: This weekend also brings Issaquah Salmon Days (see salmondays.org), Everett Sausage Fest (www.everettsausagefest.com), Langley Oktoberfest (www.visitlangley.com), Granite Falls Railroad Days (www.granitefallswa.com), Seattle Center's CroatiaFest (www.seattlecenter.com) and more.

Tastes of the season: Sample dozens of varieties of apple during AppleLooza at Saturday's University District Farmers Market (www.seattlefarmersmarkets.org). Or sip the best products of malt and hops at Tacoma Craft Beer Festival at Foss Waterway Seaport (www.tacomacraftbeerfest.com).

— Brian J. Cantwell, NWWeekend editor