RANGELEY – Come and experience part of western Maine’s apple heritage when the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum holds its 17th annual Apple Festival on Saturday, Oct. 2, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Main Street, Rangeley. Museum volunteers will make the beef stew for the luncheon that begins at 11:00am, and will also serve up chili, hot dogs, hamburgers, apple desserts, and more. Admission to the festival is free.
Inside the Church, all kinds of homemade foods made with apples and other treats will be for sale, including pies, breads, muffins, and cookies, and jellies. Crafts, including Christmas items, made by artists throughout the region will fill the church. Visitors will also be able to see and order the Logging Museum’s reproductions of the Alden Grant paintings of logging in Kennebago. Also available will be Logging Museum books, sweatshirts, and t-shirts.
Outside the church, Rodney Richard, Sr. and Rodney Richard, Jr., of Pownal, will rev up their chain saws and bring a host of Maine animals out of blocks of white pine. Logging Museum volunteers will demonstrate apple pressing and cider making on the apple press. Terry Trask of Trask Orchard, Jay, will sell cider, apples, and more so festival visitors can press apples into cider at the festival. People may also bring their own apples to be pressed.
Apples loom large in the history of western Maine. The apple press, owned by Bill and Margaret Ellis, points to Rangeley’s earlier years. From the family=s apples, Bill’s mother, Katharine, made dried apples, apple rings, apple leather, apple sauce, baked apples, and cider. And the family would walk up to their orchard where Bill’s great-grandfather Jerry lived for the Jerry Ellis Apple Picking Day. “Just whoever was around in the immediate family would go up there and pick apples,” Bill explains, “and fill our backpacks. There must be twenty different kinds of apples up there.”
For more information about the festival, call Ron Haines (864-5551). From October through June 2011, the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum is open by appointment only (864-5551). Mark your calendars for the 31st annual Logging Festival on July 29 and 30, 2011.
