Four-day Apple Fest kicks off Thursday

    Apple Fest attendees enjoy the carnival during the 2009 Four Flags Area Apple Festival. This year’s events kick off Thursday in Niles. (File photo)
    Apple Fest attendees enjoy the carnival during the 2009 Four Flags Area Apple Festival. This year’s events kick off Thursday in Niles. (File photo)

    By AARON MUELLER

    Niles Daily Star

    With the summer fairs and festivals complete, some communities face a dry spell of family entertainment in the early weeks of fall.

    Not so in Niles.

    The 38th annual Four Flags Area Apple Festival will get underway Thursday and run through Sunday with a full slate of activities, contests and entertainment acts. The festival is sticking with what works, bringing back many of the same attractions from previous years with very few new additions.

    Pat Teeter, the media relations coordinator for the event, said the apple pie-eating, seed-popping and beard and mustache contests are always on the top of everyone’s lists for contests and will be back again this year.

    She also said there have been 120 entries in Saturday’s grand parade that begins at 1:30 p.m. on Second Street and runs about five miles through town, ending at Niles High School.

    Rather than having two separate fireworks displays this year, the Apple Festival will  instead feature one big show Saturday night.

    “There is something for everyone,” Teeter said. “Things for children with the puppet parade and older people with the pancake breakfasts with an open stage. Arts and crafts are popular for the ladies. We have a real good carnival crew that comes through.”

    Teeter expects about 100,000 people from all over southwest Michigan and even farther away to come to the festival over the course of the four-day weekend.

    That kind of attendance means a boost for Niles businesses.

    “The businesses community supports us, because it brings people in,” Teeter said. “There’s not a lot to do when summer is over. So they are glad to see people come in and give a boost to tourism.”

    The festival, this year under the theme of “Apple Fiesta,” requires a lot of help. There is a board of 18 people and about 200 volunteers help the festival run smoothly.

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