Amherst Cider Festival Funds Lindabury Orchard Until 2014

This year's Amherst Cider Festival seems to have been a smashing (or pressing) success!

Randy Chapman, president of Friends of the Orchard and festival organizer said that they raised about $4,500 towards maintaining and improving the Lindabury Orchard in Amherst.

This is the third cider festival to benefit the orchard, which used to be owned by the late Jack Lindabury before he passed in 2001. The 60 acres of orchard property was purchased by The Amherst Land Trust through grants, donations and a warrant article. The Friends of the Orchard was formed to maintain the orchard and improve the property. Read more.

Here is what Chapman had to say about this year's festival.

We had a clear warm day for the Cider Fest. We estimate we had about 500 folks who hand pressed over 5,000 apples into cider!  All of the feedback so far has been positive. We raised enough money to operate the Orchard for 2 more years!"

The music (by Robert Allwarden and Rich Kumpu) was excellent and dovetailed nicely with the "Afternoon in the Orchard" theme. Moulton's Market provided Oktoberfest munchies. The kids activities were a big hit. Caramel apples, face painting, pumpkin decorating, petting zoo and hay rides kept the kids entertained for hours. The "apple themed" bake sale gave the festival goers an opportunity to take home a tasty reminder of the fun afternoon. Here are a few pictures from the afternoon. I wish I had pictures of the sack races and pie eating contests. I'll send them to you if I can get my hands on some. They were hysterical.

We started the afternoon with a kid's tale, by Rich Hart, of a Cider Festival some 200 years ago in Amherst.

One of our goals of the afternoon was to explain to the festival goers the mission of FOTO (Friends of the Orchard)  and the Amherst Land Trust. FOTO, now, has several new volunteers to help maintain, educate and improve the Orchard. Bill Birchard, representing the Amherst Land Trust, spoke to the crowd mid afternoon and explained how the Lindabury Orchard,  the Wah Lum Preserve (in Mont Vernon) and other unique parcels of land in the area have been conserved. He also spoke briefly about the effort, by the ALT,  to raise money to purchase 2 lots that would connect Amherst to the mosaic of Grater Woods.