On Oct. 17 and 18, Way Fruit Farm held its second fall festival, Fun on the Farm. The festival featured farm tours, a craft market, food vendors, live music, apple picking and wagon rides to the pumpkin patch. Visitors gathered for this community event to select pumpkins, enjoy food and celebrate the fall season.
Way Fruit Farm is a sixth-generation family farm in Port Matilda, Pennsylvania, offering fresh fruits and vegetables grown on their property, as well as local products.
State High graduate from the 70s, Linda White said, “It’s a local family, I’ve known the family for many years, and … they’re just good people all around. They take pride in their produce and everything that they do.”
Every year, the Farm hosts festivals each weekend for the whole month of October, which are a welcoming environment for all ages to enjoy autumn festivities.
Kendall George, the Way Fruit Farm manager, described the season: “Fall is very crazy for us here, especially on Fridays and Saturdays [during festivals].”
George gave an overview of everything the festival offers: “We have our bakery and cafe [and] all of our fresh produce and apples that we have grown at the farm. Outside, we have four different food trucks, two different bands playing today, [and] a craft market with about 15 craft vendors.”
Vendors sold artisan crafts, including jewelry, artwork and handmade pot-holders.
State High junior Elizabeth Houser and her mom visited the festival after driving past it previously.
“We passed it a couple of times, and it looked really fun, and I just wanted to see what it was about,” she said. “I like seeing the local crafts.”
White attended the festival with her husband. “We’ve just done this for so many years, it’s part of our tradition,” she said. “We love their apples, … their food, their homemade products, the people, it’s just a good time to be here.”
The cafe was bustling with a line of more than 30 customers waiting to order a meal from their menu of soups, salads, sandwiches and mac and cheese bowls.
Their bakery offered their most popular desserts, their old-fashioned apple cider donuts, as well as pies, breads, muffins, cookies, and whoopie pies.
“[My favorite thing they have here is] definitely their pumpkin donuts,” Houser said. “They also make great pies. I get the cherry pie.”
Kids played on the giant tractor-shaped playset and created art in the craft area inside the store. Visitors could go outside to the orchard and pick their own apples, as well as hop on the wagon to the pumpkin patch, where they could walk through the fields and pick our pumpkins with their family and friends.
Way Fruit Farm’s vast array of autumnal festivities offers a cozy experience for everyone to enjoy, full of apples, pumpkins and crafts.
“I would definitely come back and recommend it to others,” White said.
Way Fruit Farm’s third and final fall festival of the year, Last Chance Pumpkin Patch, was held on Oct. 24 and 25.
There will be no more festivals until next October, but the farm is open all year round for guests to come inside and enjoy the food, baked goods, produce, local products and crafts they sell inside the store.
George said, “We highly recommend people to come out and visit outside of the festivals because then you can really take in the area and the excitement and the joy that we have here at the farm.”
