CANTON -- Potsdam’s Congregation Beth El Food Festival, Canton folklorist Lynn Case Ekfelt, Rossie blacksmith John Scarlett, and the Lowville Fish and Game Club with soon be honored by Traditional Arts in Upstate New York.

They will receive 2015 North Country Heritage Awards at the Salute to North Country Heritage Oct. 18 at The TAUNY Center in downtown Canton from 2 to 4 p.m. Recipients are also featured in a permanent exhibition at The TAUNY Center.

Potsdam's Congregation Beth El Food Festival, established in the late 1970s as a fundraiser for the synagogue, “has been bringing people together over the last three decades to make, celebrate, and enjoy Jewish traditional foods,” TAUNY said. The festival regularly features a range of family specialties—including blintzes, latkes, falafel, soups, hummus, and more, prepared by Beth El members—as well as breads and pastries from a kosher bakery in Montreal.

“The award honors the ways in which this festival celebrates traditional Jewish foodways, both featuring family and community food traditions that have been handed down through generations, and sharing those traditions with the broader community in a way that helps to carry them forward,” a news release from TAUNY said.

Scarlett of Rossie took his first blacksmithing class in his late thirties and is now celebrating more than three decades as sole proprietor of Little Tree Forge. He began by forging high-quality American colonial reproductions and went on to demonstrate preindustrial blacksmithing techniques at the Adirondack Museum for 20 years. More recently, he has focused on creating one-of-a-kind pieces, mostly for clients living within 50 miles of his shop in Rossie, that reflect the natural flora, fauna, and architecture of the region. Scarlett has also long enjoyed sharing this traditional art with others by teaching beginners and educating the public about the beauty and nature of hammer-worked iron.

In the midst of a 28-year career as a librarian at St. Lawrence University, Lynn Case Ekfelt earned a second master’s degree in folklore in 1977. Since then, she has done extensive work documenting North Country traditions, independently and in collaboration with TAUNY. Her work with TAUNY includes editing and authoring “Good Food Served Right,” the national award-winning community cookbook featuring a variety of North Country food traditions, as well as coordinating volunteer food-related programs for years. She also contributed a regular column to “VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore,” sharing her experiences traveling around the North Country to document regional food cultures. Ekfelt is also known for being an experienced and accomplished cook herself, TAUNY said.

The Lowville Fish and Game Club has been active since the 1920s and now has more than 200 members.