Last year we entertained over 1,000 attendees and hosted 40 vendors. With experience under our belt, we are planning for an even better Pawpaw Fest.
In addition to 50+ vendors, our 2nd annual festival will be filled with multiple ecology based educational speakers & local musicians. Join us to celebrate, taste & learn about North America’s largest native fruit - The PawPaw. We hope to inspire our community to restore native plant habitat and learn to live in harmony with the seasons of our Ecosystem.
Music & Educational Presentation set list coming soon…
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. 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.