(Aug. 11, 2016) Peaches, and maybe a little dose of history, drew thousands of visitors to downtown Berlin last Saturday for dueling annual events — the Berlin Peach Festival and Heritage Fair.
The massive trees on the front lawn of the Calvin B. Taylor House Museum provided ample shade for the dozens of food and arts and crafts vendors on a day when the thermostat threatened to push into triple digits.
Live music from youth group Perpetual Commotion, and later from folksy strummers Mickey Justice and Charlie Flagiello, greeted the onslaught of guests, while workers served up peach dumplings, peach pies and peach ice cream.
Little Mister Peach, Will Rayne, and Little Miss Peach, Brooke Cathell, joined Berlin Mayor Gee Williams during a brief ribbon cutting on the porch of the museum.
“This is truly a special day each year in Berlin, as we share with friends and family and many guests a festival in which we honor our past, celebrate our present and recommit to the promise of our community’s future,” Williams said. “While we are grateful that we live in a town that is successfully adapting to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, I hope we never forget that so much of what is possible today in the town of Berlin is because we have never forgotten or taken for granted our community’s heritage.”
In Berlin, Williams said, the town honors it’s past, “but we don’t live in it.”
“What continues to make this festival so popular, besides all the many tasty and peachy things we will eat today, is that this is a day to share our common heritage and our caring for each other as citizens of the family of Berlin,” Williams said.
Emcee Patricia Dufendach thanked the many volunteers that make both events possible, and asked for a special prayer for Carol Rose, a member of the museum’s board of directors, who could not attend because she was recovering from an illness.
“She is the biggest volunteer in this town, I believe, and I’d just like to put a word out there and let her know that we’re thinking about her,” Dufendach said.
An unusual April cold snap killed a large portion of the local peach crop, and Dufendach said Rose was instrumental in securing an alternate vendor to supply fresh peaches for the occasion.
Berlin native Sandy Dewey, who works the peach table each year, estimated “about 95 percent” of the peach crop at Bennett Orchards, which traditionally supplies peaches for the festival, was destroyed by the freeze.
When organizers were sent scrambling, she said Harris Market, in Salisbury, connected them to Pennsylvania-based Forge Hill Orchards, which supplied several crates of succulent-looking red havens.
“They’ve done a wonderful job,” she said.
Elsewhere, on the south end of Main Street just off the porch of the Atlantic Hotel, the Ocean Pines Players performed a series of time-traveling reenactments for the transient audience of shoppers and restaurant goers.
A large swath of downtown was blocked off for the day, and rows of vintage automobiles lined the streets, gleaming in the brilliant August sun.
Dufendach said an early morning omen convinced her the good weather would hold, despite the threat of thunderstorms in the forecast.
“This morning when I was pulling out of my driveway there was a cloud hanging over, and little, tiny raindrops fell on my car. I was grateful, because I knew if the rain fell on me first thing in the morning it wasn’t going to rain on the rest of us [during] the rest of the day,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s a wonderful day,” she continued. “Thousands of people have come across the lawn, and with having the Heritage Festival pairing with us it makes downtown just a wonderful place for people to explore. Everyone’s so happy, and I think that we’re going to sell out of everything.”