Apple Festival 2025

The Greencastle Apple Festival is an annual event held at 

Tayamentasachta dating back to 1981. Yearly, community 

members come together to raise money for the 

Tayamentasachta Environmental Education Center.Proceeds

from foods like apple dumplings and BBQ went to this cause.

Additionally, school clubs like Art Club and Rho Kappa hosted 

events of their own. 

Rho Kappa hosted an open house event in the museum room 

located on the top story of the Stover Farmhouse. Over the 

summer, Rho Kappa members worked to organize and clean 

the room to make it a functional museum.

Left Image: July 2025

Right Image: October 2025

Lining the walls is a timeline riddled with artifacts from which

the information listed originated. The timeline covers the history 

of Tayamentasachta from its Native American inhabitants, 

to the Stover family, the Winger family, and then the school 

district’s acquisition. The scholars hope to digitize this timeline and

get it printed so that the delicate artifacts can be put in storage, 

away from the sunlight that slowly erodes at the artifacts. 

Image: A small portion of the mentioned timeline that outlines the 

Stover family tree.

While the museum was open for self-guided tours, scholars 

worked to photograph and transcribe piles of two-dimensional 

artifacts like land deeds, bank checks, newspapers, and more. 

For Rho Kappa, the Apple Festival was an opportunity to open 

the doors to the public. More open houses over the coming 

months are going to take place.Check under the events heading 

on the home page! 

More clubs/organizations than Rho Kappa participated in the 

Apple Festival. Art Club, placeholder, and placeholder also 

participated. Many school programs utilize the Apple Festival 

to fundraise for their clubs. 

Art Club, for one, offered handmade ceramics, coffee and 

delicious spiral cut hotdogs to raise funds. Below are a 

few short questions with Highschool Art and

Ceramics Teacher and Faculty Advisor of Art 

Club Alex Miller. 

Q: What does the Apple Festival mean to you? How 

does your club utilize the event?

A:  I am the Art Club Advisor. Art Club covers a large 

portion of Apple Fest (facepainting, pumpkin painting, 

scarecrow making, Pottery Sale, Hot Dogs & Coffee). 

This is the GAHS Art Club’s sole fundraising event. 

This also serves as a community service event, as 

this provides some very affordable family activities that 

hundreds of visitors enjoy every year. Many of the 

activities were started by my predecessor, Carolyn 

Baker, who was a highly regarded long time Art 

Teacher in GAHS before retiring in ~2014 or so.  

I actually was Carolyn Baker’s Student teacher in 

2007 in the classroom that I now teach in (currently 

my 18th year teaching in the district). I took over as 

advisor of the art club, and continued many of the 

same events.

Q: What do you take away from the Apple Festival 

each year?  

A: It is a HUGE undertaking and one of the busiest 

times of year for me and for the Art Club. However, 

the event is very rewarding as we are doing so many 

great things at the event. Our stations are also 

profitable enough to entirely fund Art Club’s events and 

materials. We don’t need to do any other fundraising.  

My very favorite thing that happens every year is seeing 

my former students coming back to talk to me at Apple 

Fest. They are always surprised that I remember their 

name, let alone remember many of the things they made. 

Sometimes they are returning with families of their own, 

which is a fun marker of the time that has passed.

Q: You have a very scientific method for making your 

hot dogs…will you explain that?

A: The hot dogs started one year when another vendor 

dropped out, and Kerri Barnes asked if we wanted to do 

any food stuff. I worked with the club officers that year, 

and we developed a concept called “The Art of the Dog” 

where we thought about how to elevate a hot dog. I 

brought in the spiral-cut method because this makes a 

superior dog for toppings (more surface area for the maillard 

reaction, the cut sections better hold the toppings, and when 

taking a bite there is a more balanced bite). The first few years 

we had a menu themed around famous artists. I’ve inserted 

the menu below from those years. This ended up being too 

complicated with too high of food cost as time went on, so 

we simplified the menu a bit in later years. 

Apple Festival is a Greencastle staple of the Fall 

season. For community members it offers promises 

of apple cider and carriage rides (and spiral cut 

hotdogs). For Rho Kappa, Art club, and the Environmental 

Center, though, it offers opportunities to share progress 

with the community and raise the funds that will sustain 

them to continue their work over the next year. 

Cover image credit

Contact rhokappa@gcasd.org with any inquires 

This website was programmed by Vincent Allen

The Greencastle Archives was created by Sawyer Allen