A taste of Trelawny - Local flavours fill in New York park on picnic day

Unbridled delight oozed from the picnic goers as they converged on Rockland County State Park in Nyack, upstate New York, USA, on May 29 for the annual Trelawny Day Picnic.

The event, which has been held consistently over the past 42 years, was returning after a two-year COVID-enforced absence. It drew more than 3,000 Trelawnyites from across the United States, Canada, and Jamaica.

With grills fired up and the aromas wafting through the air, Trelawnyites from far and wide gathered in the park to lyme with their parishoner. They took with them tents, their ever-present reggae music, fancy grills and gear, ackee and saltfish, roasted breadfruit as well as their famous Trelawny yams.

Nothing was for sale! The custom has been to share the fun.

The annual Trelawny Day Picnic was conceptualised more than 40 years ago when a few friends from Falmouth - Horace Harrison, Linval Brown, Wendell Stewart, Richard Chambers, Eli Nish, Mr and Mrs DK Mullings and Peter HoShing got together in their backyard on the Memorial Weekend Sunday for a link-up.

Chambers said that the picnic sprang from a 1970s Bronx, New York, backyard barbeque for people from Falmouth. Over the years, it has been a draw for Trelawnyites from far and wide.

"In a short while, it became known as the Falmouth Picnic. We then started to invite friends from Duncans, Clarks Town and other areas of the parish," Chambers said.

"As the gathering grew, it took on the name of the 'Trelawny Day Picnic' and has ballooned to the extent that one year we had more than 6,000 people at the upstate New York meeting place, all claiming to be from Trelawny," Chambers added.

Falmouth's mayor Collen Gager, a regular at the annual gathering, was glad to see the return of the event.

"I am here again at the Trelawny Reunion. Now COVID has eased and of course we get a chance to sell Falmouth - and Trelawny as a whole - and that is one of the reasons why I am here today," he said.

Garth Wilkinson, councillor for the Falmouth Division, is another regular who journeyed from Jamaica to participate in the decades-old Trelawny tradition.