Ever heard of the Ohio Pawpaw Festival? Get ready. This one-of-a-kind, weird little festival in the middle of nowhere is thrown every year in honor of a fruit just as one-of-a-kind and just as weird. As far as fun summer activities in Athens, this September weekend at Lake Snowden is something everyone looks forward to. It’s an awesome way to soak up local culture, eat some delicious food, and try some very strange pawpaw-based beers and foods.
So what’s a pawpaw? And what’s the Ohio Pawpaw Festival? Let’s find out!
What Is The Pawpaw Fruit & Where Did it Come From?
The pawpaw tree (Asimina Triloba) is a flowering fruit tree native to North America, where it grows wild in patches across the eastern US forests. The family that includes the pawpaw tree has existed on the continent for about 60 million years, and there is direct evidence they have specifically been in Ohio for at least 30,000 years. The trees are really interesting because they spread into colonies via “root suckers”, creating a patch of genetically identical trees.
A small, understory, tropical-looking but not-tropical tree, the pawpaw flowers in the spring and bears ripe fruit by mid-summer. The fruits grow in little clusters and kind of look like mangoes. They do best near rivers in locales that have hot summers and cold winters. Ohio is known to have some of the biggest and best tasting pawpaws in the country.
What is the taste? Depends on who you ask. Most people will tell you a mash-up of other fruits you’ve heard of before, because the pawpaw truly is unique. Some simply say “banana”, but it’s more like banana-mango with hints of kiwi? The texture is just as hard to pin down, which just means you should definitely try one when you get the chance.
A Brief History of the Pawpaw Tree
The pawpaw is a constant and impactful presence in the human history of this continent, and well before – it very well may have gone extinct after the megafauna died out had people not caught on to its edibility, nutritive value and ease of cultivation. Since then, Indigenous Americans utilized the pawpaw in their seasonal diets and purposefully cultivated wild trees as part of a larger method of forest management. The Shawnee even had a designated pawpaw month in their calendar.
When Europeans invaded, they, too, discovered the usefulness of this random fruit. In fact, it may be the only reason Lewis and Clarke didn’t starve to death on their way to the Pacific. Europeans are also the reason for its backwoods name, as they confused the fruit for a papaya. They partially tried to make up for it later, using an Algonquin word associated with the tree, “assimin”, is the basis for the pawpaw’s scientific name.
Throughout colonial times to modern history, regular people all over Appalachia harvest, cook with and consume the pawpaw each year when they’re in season. But you won’t find them in the grocery store, because the fruit ripens really quickly, so there’s no way to do transport and distribution on any scale.
Supporting the existence of the pawpaw tree and educating the public on its value is a useful endeavor in the search for a way to do local, sustainable types of micro agriculture. The pawpaw tree is also a major host for pollinators. In fact, it’s the only plant Zebra Swallowtail Butterfly larvae will eat, and it’s the tree’s awful-tasting leaves that make that butterfly disgusting to its predators. Cool, right?
What You Can Expect to Find at The Ohio Pawpaw Festival
So – what’s The Ohio Pawpaw Festival? Pawpaw Fest is packed with the unique regional Appalachian culture you find in these parts of Ohio and West Virginia. It’s a diverse, eclectic, lively, if pretty crunchy type beat. Our region is focused on the revitalization of Appalachia – environmentally, culturally and economically. So you’ll find many talks, activities and products that reflect that. For instance:
Food & Drink
There will be standard outdoor festival fare like beers in kegs and delicious street food. But many of the food vendors and breweries create things that incorporate the pawpaw fruit, like:
- Jackie O’s Pawpaw Wheat Fruit Beer
- Constellation Kombucha’s Pawpaw Acai Kombucha
- Devil’s Kettle’s Pawpaw Imperial Blonde Ale
- Tasty Indonesia’s vegetable pawpaw noodles
- Kiser BBQ’s pawpaw Carolina gold BBQ sauce
- Burrito Buggy’s pawpaw salsa
- Hot Diggity Dog Unlimited’s pawpaw funnel cakes
- Dr. May’s Thai Kitchen’s pawpaw salad
Live Music
The Ohio Pawpaw Festival attracts musical acts large and small; it’s always nice to see more of a variety than you usually do in this area. Past musical acts have included:
- Amythyst Kiah
- Son Little
- Largemouth Brass Band
- Oh He Dead
- Big Blitz
- Caitlin Kraus
Vendors
It’s extremely difficult not to pick up a thing or two as you walk around the marketplace each year. The variety, the craftsmanship, the shop-local of it all. You’ll often see vendors like:
- Daphnia Ceramics – pottery design inspired by nature (won Best Art at the 2023 festival!)
- Michael West Artistic Woodworking – handcrafted rustic wooden dishware/utilitarian items
- Wild Goods: Foraged Food Truffles & Medicinals – foraged fungi, truffles and medicinals
- Cricket Jones Jewelry – repurposed vintage sterling dinnerware items into jewelry items
- Southeast Ohio Fiberworks – hand-dyed wool yarns from local farmers
- Moonville Print Shop – clothing and bags from hand-carved relief prints
Lectures & Workshops
Education gets fun and hands-on at this festival. Plus, you can listen to a lecture 3 beers deep – way better than college. Some interesting subjects people have spoken on in the past are:
- Urban orchards/urban farming
- Horizontal bee hives
- Scything workshop
- Pawpaw permaculture and walkabout
- Yoga classes
- Appalachian folk tales
- Indigenous history of the pawpaw
- Cooking with pawpaws
There’s also a kids’ tent with fun activities and crafts that goes on all weekend.
Organizations
You’ll also find informational booths about local non-profits and community organizations. Did you know Pawpaw Fest partners with the Zero Waste Initiative? You can bet you’ll find their booth at the festival! Other great organizations to learn more about and support include:
- Passion Works Studio – community art organization collaborating with individuals with developmental differences
- Athens Impact Socially Responsible Investments – financial consulting service focused on creating investment portfolios that are ethical and positively impact social/environmental causes
- Cannabis Museum – local museum educating the public on the medical, artistic, historical and mainstream industrial uses of cannabis in the US and worldwide
- American Forest Foundation – conservation association focused on empowering families who own forests to improve the forest’s health and help the planet’s ecology
- Southeast Ohio Hope Center – a recovery community organization run by people in long-term recovery for anyone seeking to recover from substance use disorders
- Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association – empowering farmers in the region with services like workshops, transition to organic, and support for new farmers
There’s something for everybody out at the Pawpaw Festival. And it doesn’t hurt that the area is beautiful, too. A piece of the fabric of our local community, anyone looking for a truly Appalachian Ohio experiment should check it out!