Tayamentasachta Environmental Center celebrates fall with Apple Festival

GREENCASTLE >> If you have ever wanted to time travel, the Apple Festival and Antique Engine Display Saturday, Oct. 10, at the Tayamentasachta Environmental Center is the place to be. It will also be the place to find an enormous variety of apples.

A strolling minstrel will delight visitors with historical stories, music and song, one of the many moments during the day when the past will seem closer. An antique engine exhibit by the Cumberland Valley Antique Engine and Machinery Association and horse-drawn wagon rides along the Tayamentasachta trails featuring a team of Belgian Horses, compliments of Charles Lindsay, will also bring back images of an earlier day when farming was the predominant occupation.

There will be local craft displays and decorations — many offered by the Greencastle-Antrim High School's Arts Club — such as scarecrow making, face painting and pumpkin decorating. A hearty chicken barbecue lunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. with cabbage slaw, baked potatoes, applesauce from Knouse Foods, rolls, cake and apple cider. Michael's BBQ will provide the meal. Tickets for the meal are $8 in advance, available at any of the Greencastle-Antrim Schools, or $9 on the day of the festival.

Apples will be the stars of the day, with several varieties and related products available from Tracey's Orchard, and members of the Tracey family on hand to answer questions.

And what a better way to celebrate autumn's best-loved fruit than in the form of dumplings, freshly baked in the farmhouse kitchen and on sale for $3.50 per dumpling.

Tayamentasachta was established in 1966 as an Environmental Center, with 35 acres featuring an 1820s farmhouse and barn, natural spring and spring house, log cabin, longhouse, pavilion, orchard and trails.

Ron Powers, former teacher and administrator in Greencastle-Antrim, said that "Tayamentasachta is a unique and unusual resource that most schools don't have, and which gives kids a hands-on way to understand and appreciate the environment."

"All students in the district, from kindergarten on up, go through the center," Powers said. "One of my classes worked on the wetlands as part of a school project, making a topographic map, putting in native plants and making ponds and a bridge."

The proceeds from the apple festival will benefit the Environmental Education Advisory Committee and the education programs at the Center. Powers, now chairman of the fundraising committee, said that proceeds will be used for repairs and maintenance on the farmhouse.