The annual Kimmswick Apple Butter Festival was well attended despite cold, damp conditions last weekend, Mayor Phil Stang said.
He estimated that 100,000 people attended the two-day festival, held Oct. 28-29.
“Even though it was very cold and rain was always on your mind, I think we had a huge crowd on Saturday,” Stang said. “There were less people (on Oct. 29), but there was still quite a crowd, even though it was freezing cold and no one knew when the rain was or wasn’t going to come.”
He said the festival didn’t actually get that much rain either day, with the rain holding out until about 5 p.m. Oct. 28 and then only falling for about 20 minutes at 2 p.m. and during the last 15 minutes on Oct. 29.
Stang said on Monday, town officials were still calculating how much money the festival generated but predicted it would be more than $80,000.
Kimmswick officials said about 120,000 people attended last year’s Apple Butter Festival, which brought in about $87,000 for Kimmswick.
The annual Apple Butter and Strawberry festivals make up about 80 percent of the town’s budget, according to town officials.
Stang said planning and holding the Apple Butter Festival is a big team effort.
“We had a lot of cooperation from a lot of people to make this thing come off as well as it did,” he said. “We owe a big ‘That a boy’ to the festival committee and volunteers.”
Apple Butter
Diane Nagey, president of the Kimmswick Historical Society, said apple butter sales were down this year, so about 1,200 jars are still available for purchase. She said about 5,000 jars were produced for the festival.
Nagey said the Historical Society will sell the remaining jars from 1-4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 4-5, at the Apple Butter Pavilion on Market Street. The jars cost $6 each.
“For all of the people who were unable to come to the festival, we are going to make a special effort to make sure they can get their apple butter,” she said.
Churning out fun
Stang said he received good reports from the approximately 400 vendors who took part in the festival.
“The vendors told me the sales were excellent on Saturday,” he said. “On Sunday, because of the weather, their sales were down some, and they wrote that off to Mother Nature.”
Stang also said families enjoyed the children’s activities, including a petting zoo, pony rides and bounce houses.
“I would see people with two or three kids, and they always wanted to know where the children’s area was,” he said. “It was good.”
The weekend also featured performances by acoustic musician Andrew Dahle, the Array Band and Exit 180.
“They were all excellent,” Stang said.
He said the town received compliments about how it managed traffic throughout the weekend.
“We had a considerable amount of parking on our ballfields, which in the past have been leased out to baseball organizations, so that was new this year,” he said.
Kimmswick has plenty on events on tap for the holiday season. First up is Deer Widow’s Weekend on Nov. 10-12, followed by the Christmas Parade and Open House on Nov. 18, the Cookie Walk set for Nov. 30 through Dec. 3 and the Christmas Festival on Dec. 1-3.