By Tara Fischer

Staff Writer

(July 31, 2o25) Berlin’s annual Peach Festival is back this weekend for its 18th year with vendors, games, and sweet treats inspired by the fruit that was once an economic and cultural staple in the town.

Berlin’s Peach Festival, sponsored by the Calvin B. Taylor House Museum and held on the facility’s lawn, will kick off this Saturday, Aug. 2 at 10 a.m. and wrap up around 3 p.m. Town residents and visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy delicious peach-centered dishes, listen to live music, stock up on locally grown peaches, and partake in engaging, community activities.

Taylor House President Melissa Reid said that the Peach Festival will feature free kids’ games that will be ongoing throughout the day. Included in the lineup is the attendee favorite cupcake walk, an activity similar to musical chairs, but where the winner receives a cupcake.

New to the fruit-themed event this year are enhanced yard games. Through a partnership between the Town of Berlin and Buckingham Elementary School, the educational facility is bringing blown-up versions of checkers, chess, and Connect Four. Cornhole will also be set up on the museum’s lawn.

Also available for the kids will be temporary water-activated peach tattoos.

Peach Festival staples like the amateur pie-baking contest are on the schedule, as is the annual pie-eating contest. Reid said that there are three categories for the eating competition: adult, older kids, and younger kids.

“We have little pies, almost like peach dumplings, and whoever eats it the fastest, they win a prize,” the museum president said.

Hot dogs and hamburgers will be for sale from the Germantown School. The proceeds from these purchases will directly benefit the Rosenwald school. The Purnell Cemetery Foundation will also be on-site as a vendor serving barbecue chicken. The Purnell Cemetery Foundation, Reid said, is a nonprofit dedicated to supporting an African American, local family cemetery.

Furthermore, the Taylor House will host a kids’ story time on Saturday. The museum will also be open, and Reid encourages festivalgoers to take a tour of the facility.

As per the event’s name, fresh peaches will be available for sale. Reid encourages attendees to buy some peaches, as each dollar spent at the festival “goes right back to supporting [the Taylor House] in telling the stories of Berlin.”

According to Reid, this year’s event will feature the band The Berlin Airlift for the first time. Reid said that in years past, the Peach Festival’s music selection was exclusively George and Pat Bilenki of the local Bilenki Duo. This time around, however, the celebration will welcome stylings from another local group. Both the Bilenki Duo and The Berlin Airlift will play their tunes to entertain attendees.

The inclusion of the Berlin Airlift will add another layer of town heritage to the day, Reid said. The director noted that the music group’s name is inspired by a music festival, to be called Berlin Airlift, that was to take place around 1970 near Stephen Decatur High School. The event’s lineup included headliners like The Allman Brothers Band. Worcester County officials ultimately canceled the multiple-day festival to prevent excessive crowding in the area, but it did take place in Washington, D.C.

Adding the local music group, The Berlin Airlift, inspired by another piece of Berlin’s history, will enhance the Peach Festival’s commitment to the town’s culture and heritage.

Also on the entertainment lineup is local magician Magic Jack, who will be conducting a live performance.

Saturday’s festival was started as an annual event 18 years ago to honor the town’s peachy history. From around the 1890s until the 1940s, the Berlin-based Harrison Orchards was the “largest mail order fruit orchard in the entire world,” Reid said, and dominated the United States’ peach market.

Seasonally dependent, the farm, which also produced fruits other than peaches, created between 250 and 500 jobs in and around Berlin. While the fruit nursery no longer exists, Harrison’s home, Windy Brow, also called the Orlando Harrison House, still stands near Berlin’s railroad tracks.

Reid noted that the fruit-themed celebration was kick-started by the Taylor House’s former curator, Susan Taylor. While reviewing the facility archives, Taylor discovered a photo from 1910 of a festival held at the Harrison House.

“It looked like it was probably other orchard owners and other people involved in the fruit festival, and that’s where [Taylor] got the idea to start the Peach Festival,” Reid said.

Now, 18 years later, the event attracts approximately 3,000 attendees annually and is the Calvin B. Taylor House’s largest fundraiser and the largest event in Berlin.

“Berlin now is known for a lot of festivals, which is wonderful, but the Peach Festival was the first one,” Reid noted. “We are so pleased that it keeps going.”

The Peach Festival will start at 10 a.m. this Saturday in front of the Calvin B. Taylor House. To manage the crowds and in-town parking, a shuttle sponsored by Ocean Downs Casino will transport visitors from Berlin Intermediate School and drop them off directly in front of the Taylor House’s lawn.