Duncansville PawPaw Fest

We are excited to announce Blair Counties very first Pawpaw festival will take place this year on the Autumn Equinox! Special thanks to Duncansville Community Days for sponsoring and hosting this new festival at their Memorial Park along Blair Gap Run. Vendors are welcome to join at $35 per table. We will have fresh Pawpaws for everyone to try a taste gathered by Restoration Landcare / Wildones PA Ridge&Valley and might be making smoothies with The Juice Shack. Large cultivated trees will be available for purchase along with wild seedling trees. After going to Pawpaw festivals in York County and Frederick, Maryland we learned just how loved Pawpaws are; inspiring culture, culinary creativity and music. With a custardy texture and a taste of mango mixed with banana, you can understand why it is so popular. Fortunately the Pawpaw doesn't have a long shelf life so it cannot be mass produced to sit on our shelves at the expensive franchised grocery stores. Why is this fortunate? Because this gives opportunity for local communities to craft, grow, create with the pawpaw and any of the money exchange or trade with the pawpaw stays in our local community which is good for our local economy. It also creates an Ecotourism opportunity which would be a blessing to make money by helping restore and appreciate the Earth with Reciprocity in a system that mainly focuses on extracting resources and pollution as a means of economy. Most importantly it can bring us together to celebrate its season!

The pawpaw is native to Pennsylvania and should be growing in groves along our waterways. Due to the railroad, industry, widening roads, houses, and bad agricultural practices along our waterways the pawpaws vanished from the wild in our area a while ago. We have the opportunity to restore their habitat and we hope the festival motivates our community to do so. All of the wild Mammals including Humans can benefit from its nutrients approaching the cold season. The Zebra Swallow Tail butterfly can only lay its eggs on the Pawpaw tree - and no other tree in the entire world. It will fly through our community again if we plant corridors of Pawpaw trees to connect to Pittsburgh and Harrisburg by waterways. We will have a guest speaker from Pittsburgh area who studies the Zebra Swallow Tail Butterfly - Gabrielle Marsden. The PawPaw twigs are sold in Capsules at Everything Natural Under The Sun as protocol to heal Cancer and I personally know of people who this has worked for. For fun, there will be a Pickle Ball Tournament with Altoona/Blair Co. Pickleball at Duncansville Memorial Parks new Pickle Ball courts. Look forward to getting a good Blue Grass band to play some pawpaw songs at the festival. Ecotopian EarthCare plans to plant a Grove of Pawpaws at the Park this Autumn along with other parks in Blair County. If interested in checking out more seasoned paw paw festival look to Ohio Pawpaw Festival who is on their 26th annual and Pawpaw Festival - York County, PA who are on their 20th annual festival this year.