BERLIN– Thousands of visitors descended on Berlin last weekend as the town celebrated all things peach with a festival on the lawn of the Taylor House Museum.
The 15th annual Berlin Peach Festival kept people streaming through downtown Berlin throughout the day Saturday. With a record number of peaches sold out by 1 p.m., organizers said the event was by far the biggest one they’ve had yet.
“It was a huge day at the museum,” said Melissa Reid, president of the Taylor House Museum. “It was incredible.”
With an array of nonprofits and local vendors set up on the museum lawn, visitors were welcomed at 10 a.m. Saturday to celebrate the importance of the peach to Berlin’s history. While the event was meant to run until 3 p.m., attendance was so strong that most vendors were sold out by early afternoon. The museum went through 100 crates of peaches—30 more crates than it had last year—by 1 p.m. Volunteers served up more than 900 peach slushies. Buckingham Presbyterian Church sold 400 peach pies on the museum lawn, while just down the street Stevenson United Methodist Church sold more than 700 crabcakes along with peach cobbler. They went through 18 gallons of peach tea.
Baked Dessert Café, creator of Berlin’s peach dumpling, initially set up on the lawn but had to move back to the shop when it sold out.
“The Taylor House Museum Peach Festival has always, historically, been one of the best days of our year and this year was no exception,” said Robin Tomaselli. “We reached and exceeded our goal to bake more than 1,000 peach dumplings, which have been the official dessert of Berlin, Maryland since 2010.”
She said the crowd seemed larger than it had in years past and that even once her crew returned to the shop on Bay Street, they stayed busy throughout the day.
“In our opinion, and I am sure my neighboring businesses would agree, the Peach Festival is the very best celebration Berlin and its visitors enjoy,” she said. “We simply applaud Melissa Reid, her board and the Taylor House Museum volunteers who worked so very hard to make this year’s festival an enormous success.”
Reid estimates the festival attracted between 4,000 and 5,000 people. She said the perfect weather and the fact that the festival was bringing back some popular events such as the peach cupcake contest both contributed to attendance.
“I think it was a perfect storm,” she said.
Andrea Weeg’s Bay Street Blooms was a first-time vendor at this year’s festival. Weeg sold out of fresh flowers by 11 a.m. She noted that most of her customers were visitors to town.
“The Taylor House Museum did an amazing job marketing and getting all those people here and we had great weather which helped,” she said. “We’ll definitely be a vendor again next year, we’ve just got to plant more flowers.”
Reid said being able to include nonprofit organizations and cottage businesses like Bay Street Blooms was one of the aspects of the Peach Festival organizers loved. She pointed out that the Great Maryland Recipe Hunt, a project to preserve the state’s culinary history, had collected more recipes at the Peach Festival than at any previous events elsewhere.
“The Peach Festival has become such an established event it’s given us the opportunity to provide a platform for other nonprofits,” Reid said.
She and other museum volunteers are already thinking about ways to expand on this year’s success in 2024.
“The 15th anniversary of the peach festival was definitely not ‘the pits,’” Councilman Jack Orris, who is also a museum board member, said. “Records were broken and goals were set—it was a great day for all of Berlin. We can’t thank the residents and visitors who came as well as our town businesses enough for making the festival a true community event.”
Organizers are grateful for the businesses that donated a portion of the day’s proceeds to the museum. They’re also appreciative of the variety of residents and visitors who attended the event and supported the museum and vendors selling merchandise. The Peach Festival is the museum’s largest fundraiser.
“It allows us to keep working on new exhibits and new programming,” Reid said.
She said the success of the festival also showed the volunteers behind the museum just how much the community appreciated the facility dedicated to preserving Berlin’s history.
“This shows us the community thinks we’re worth supporting,” Reid said.
