As if art shows, a local farmer's market, and nearby kayaking trails weren't enough reasons to visit Berlin MD, last Sunday the town also held their annual Peach Festival, inviting hundreds of people to join in the celebration of fresh fruit and country living. Historically, Berlin had the largest peach nursery in the country, under the Harrison family, so if there's any place to hold a Peach Fest, it's here. Peaches by Bennett Orchards were represented in plenty – huge peaches, bigger than your fist, and picked at the peak of ripeness for immaculate flavor.

Ordinarily, peach distributors pick the fruit before they're ripe, so they will last through transport, but this is a special occasion. Any taste-tester could tell you there's no way a store-bought peach could hold a candle to the fruit provided by Bennett this day. Aside from fresh raw peaches, there was peach pie, peach bread, peach ice cream, peach preserves ...enough peach to pick up a banjo and sing about it!

That being said, Frank Nanna belted out the folk melodies on his fiddle and psaltery, turning this festival into a real ho-down. Musically talented children eagerly went on stage to accompany him, sharing their skills with the crowd. They weren't singing about peaches, necessarily, but the music did make the party all the more peachy.

If you can't wait for local providers to dish out the peaches, or any other produce for that matter, there's always the option of growing them yourself. That's where the Master Gardeners come in. Ginny Rosenkranz, representing the gardeners, passed along information about gardener training (see previous link), coming up in September, for anyone interested in getting their hand a little dirtier and thumbs a little greener. Visit the Master Gardeners online to find out how you can join in the potting and planting.

Also represented at the festival were Chesapeake Bay Farms with the peach ice cream, and Buckingham Presbyterian Church selling peach pies. "The festival is great for downtown Berlin. The streets are all full!" said Michael Day, Director of Economic Development in Berlin. "It gets bigger every year." Any guest could tell you the Peach Festival was the best way to "get some peach into you!"

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Written by Erik Yount. Photography by Errol Webber.