The Pawpaw Festival is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year by adding some new events and partnerships while keeping the top focus – celebrating the pawpaw.
The event, which takes place at Lake Snowden outside Albany, focuses on the pawpaw, a fruit native to the Southeastern Ohio area. Chris Chmiel, founder of the festival and main organizer, said attendance was at around 8,000 people last year.
“The festival has steadily grown each year,” Chmiel said. “We’re going to keep slowly growing the festival and mak(ing) sure we have a quality event.”
Staples such as the Best Pawpaw Competition, the Pawpaw Cook-off and the Pawpaw Eating Contest remain, but this year a few additions have been added to the event roster.
One of the most notable additions is the Pawpaw Gauntlet, a course that features 20 obstacles along a quarter-mile course. Weston Lombard, who has organized children’s activities for the festival for the past five years and is now working on the gauntlet, said the challenge is based on speed and agility.
“The festival seems to attract a diverse crowd,” he said. “A lot of people are into the sustainability movement and an overlapping population is into fitness and outdoor recreation. (This focuses) on fitness and healthy living and fun.”
Attendees will tackle the free course with a partner. The course is open all weekend during daylight hours, but a competition is held on Saturday, where the quickest teams in each age group receive prizes.
Another team effort is the zero-waste effort at the festival. Although the festival has always been committed to sustainability, this is the first year that organizers will be working with Rural Action’s Ohio Zero Waste Initiative.
Together, the groups aim to divert 90 percent of waste from the landfill.
“The Pawpaw Festival is a lot of conscious people and a strong effort to have a minimal impact,” said Kyle O’ Keefe, coordinator for the Zero Waste Initiative.
“(Sustainability efforts) have become engrained in the fabric of the festival. It creates a sense of community.”
The Pawpaw Festival will feature methods used in other area events, such as the Nelsonville Music Festival and the Rootwire Festival. This includes technology developed by Ohio University engineering students, which increases productivity “five-fold,” O’Keefe said.
The festival will run Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The Pawpaw Express, a free shuttle for students and community members, will run from Baker University Center and the Athens Community Center. A new shuttle that stops at the Albany Fairgrounds parking lot will run on Saturday.
Attendees can purchase either weekend-long or day passes for $20 and $10, respectively. Children under 12 get in free.
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@EmilyMBamforth
