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Sixth annual Peach Festival returns to Berlin, Saturday

BERLIN– The 6th annual Peach Festival, the town’s signature sweet and savory celebration, returns on Saturday, Aug. 2.
Hosted by the Calvin B. Taylor House Museum, the event features food, craft vendors, entertainment, children’s activities and displays of historic Berlin.
 “It kind of took off the first year and it’s grown each year,” said museum Curator Susan Taylor. “Last year I remember standing on the lawn and looking down Main Street and the street was packed with people going up and down the sidewalks. It’s a town event and the whole town is really involved.”
The festival originated in 1913 when the Maryland Horticultural College – known better today as the University of Maryland – helped develop an antifungal spray to save Berlin’s massive peach crop.
“The spray eradicated the fungus, so they invited people from Baltimore and the University of Maryland and Wilmington, and everybody came in on trains,” said festival co-organizer Debbie Speier. “They hosted about 1,000 people.”
“On the lawn of the Harrison House they had a big picnic with tents,” Taylor had. “The newspaper articles listed how many pounds of chicken they had and all this stuff, so it was a big thing.”
The festival halted when a peach blight decimated Berlin’s peach nurseries decades later. The Taylor House resurrected the event in the 21st century as part of a historic revival campaign.
This year’s festival features live entertainment by Mickey Justice from the Folk Heroes, peach pie eating contests, peach pie baking contests, peaches for sale, and several vendors and demonstrations. The Berlin Heritage Foundation sponsors the pie-baking contest. Children’s activities begin at 11:30 a.m., and the Calvin B. Taylor House Museum will be open for tours.
“We have some new and some returning things,” Taylor said. “We have a potter this year and a soap maker, and we’re trying to keep traditional arts and traditional craft instead of more commercial things.”
Staged on the museum lawn on 208 N. Main Street, the festival will spread throughout the town as different shops and restaurants offer their own take.
“Throughout town, people are offering peach specials,” Taylor said.
“Some of the merchants decorate their windows with the peach theme in mind,” Speier said. “The whole town is pretty involved.”
Family friendly activities will highlight “old-fashioned fun.”
“They do things like making ice cream in baggies,” Speier said. “They are doing a cupcake walk, which is a play on the old-fashioned cake walk, and our demonstrators and vendors are focused more on traditional art.
“I think it’s just a sense of family fun with an undercurrent of education,” Speier continued. “We’re trying to teach people about the heritage of the town and how things used to be.”
The 6th Annual Peach Festival runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The rain date is Sunday, Aug. 3. The Berlin Heritage Foundation sponsors the festival with funding provided in part by the Worcester County Arts Council, Maryland State Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
For more information, call 410-641-1019 or visit www.taylorhousemuseum.org.