RANGELEY — The Rangeley Lakes Region Logging Museum will hold its 16th annual Apple Festival from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Main Street.

Museum volunteers will make a beef stew for the luncheon that will begin at 11 a.m. and 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 will fill the church undercroft.

Margaret Yezil of Oquossoc will offer her many creations,
such as place mats, toy moose and Christmas items. From Salem,
Daria Babbitt and friends will bring their knit goods and textile arts.
Robin Harnden of Wilton will display his ornamental metalwork. Other
crafters have promised apple cookie cutters, pot holders and wood crafts.

At the festival, the Logging Museum will unveil its new project: the
sale of reproductions of the 19 paintings by Alden Grant that detail
logging in Kennebago in the 1920s. Museum Vice President Ron Haines
will display a reproduction of “Sluicing Long Logs” and take orders for
copies of that painting and of any other painting in the series. Museum
Treasurer Harry Simon, co-director of Simon Gallery, Morristown, N.J., is overseeing the reproduction process.

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, sweatshirts and raffle tickets. The
raffle features a child’s Kawaski 50cc four wheeler for the fall raffle
to be drawn at the Apple Festival, and for a child’s Arctic Cat F-150
snowmobile for the winter raffle that will be drawn at the Snodeo.

Outside the church, 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 and apples 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
earlier years. From his family’s apples, Bill’s mother, Katharine, made
dried apples, apple rings, apple leather, apple sauce, baked apples
and cider. And the family would walk up to their orchard where Bill’s
great-grandfather, Jerry, had lived for the Jerry Ellis Apple Picking Day.

“Just whoever was around in the immediate family would go up there and
pick apples and fill our backpacks. There must be 20 different kinds of apples up there,” 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.