RANGELEY – The Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum will hold its 14th annual Apple Festival from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 6, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Main Street.

Carol Haley, Becky and Richard Hill, Lynnie Raymond and Rodney Richard will make a beef stew for the luncheon that will begin at 11 a.m. Becky Hill, Mary Ellen Simon, Steve Richard and other volunteers will also serve hot dogs, sandwiches and apple desserts.

Inside the church, homemade foods made with apples and more will be for sale, including pies, breads, muffins, cookies and jellies. Crafts from throughout the region as well as a white elephant table will fill the church undercroft.

Maggie Windship of Rangeley will display her wildlife photography. Frank and Audrey Stevens of Strong will bring their wood crafts and knit goods, doughnuts and breads. Margaret Yezil of Oquossoc will offer her many creations, such as placemats, toy moose and Christmas items. Scotty’s Ceramics will also offer their wares.

From Salem, Daria Babbitt, Colleen Coffren and April Grant will bring their knit goods and textile crafts. Crafters from the Kingfield area will bring quilts and afghans, and from Sue Young of New Portland will come creations in wood.

Other crafters have promised apple-inspired cookie cutters and pot holders. John Richard will oversee the sale of the logging museum’s publications, “Logging in the Maine Woods: The Paintings of Alden Grant and Working the Woods,” as well as T-shirts and sweatshirts. Many other crafters will attend.

Outside the church, museum President Rodney Richard Sr. of Rangeley and Rodney Richard Jr. of Pownal will rev up their chain saws and bring a host of Maine animals out of blocks of white pine.

Logging Museum Board members Richard Hill and Wayne Lessard will demonstrate apple pressing and cider making. Terry Trask of Trask Orchard in Jay will sell cider apples and more so festival visitors can press apples into cider at the festival. People may also bring their own apples to be pressed.

The apple press, owned by Bill and Margaret Ellis, points to Rangeley’s apple history, present and the past. “We keep the press outdoors by the driveway of our house,” said Bill, “and people can come by and use it. That’s why we got it – for the community.”

Ellis’ love of apples is generations long. From his family’s apples, his mother, Katharine, made dried apples, apple rings, apple leather, apple sauce, baked apples and cider.

And in years past, the family would walk up to their orchard where Bill’s great-grandfather, Jerry, had lived for the Jerry Ellis Apple Picking Day when whoever was around in the immediate family would go up and pick apples and fill backpacks. There must be 20 different kinds of apples there, Ellis said.

Ellis also remembers the cider mill on Dallas Hill. “We would pick all the apples we could. Put them in grain sacks, and put them in this big cider mill, and press them. Five or six bags at a time,” he said.

Admission to the Oct. 6 Apple Festival is free. For more information, call the Richards at 864-5595. From October to June, the Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum is open by appointment only; call 864-5595. Visit the museum Web site at http://mason.gmu.edu/~myocom and click on Maine Folklore Projects.