The idea to hold a festival in the fall came in July, according to Duncansville Mayer Eric Fritz, to help offset the costs of the borough’s weekend-long community days festival.

“We do that one for the nonprofits,” Fritz said. “We don’t charge any of them to set up and all of the money they make when they’re there, they keep 100% of it.”

That leaves the borough needing to raise funds to pay for the entertainment and other necessities. After the COVID-19 pandemic, Fritz said getting sponsorships from business is “a little more difficult than it used to be” due to tighter budgets and inflation.

“So, we talked about adding a second festival and bringing in paid vendors, to raise some money to help fund the community days that we do for the nonprofits,” Fritz said.

One of several pawpaw trees grows by the water at Duncansville Memorial Park. Mirror photo by Rachel Foor

That’s where Altoona residents Jordan and JennaRose Wild came in with their environmental conservation organization Ecotopian EarthCare. The couple had gone to other pawpaw festivals and been inspired, but since the tree takes a long time to bear fruit, they thought they were going to have to be patient.

“We did a lot of plantings with the pawpaw trees,” JennaRose said. “So we’ve got pawpaws planted here in a lot of different places and we thought, ‘Wow, one day we can have our own Pawpaw Festival … but that’s not going to be until, like, 10 years.'”

Having helped the borough remove invasive trees and other plants that supported the spotted lantern fly, the Wilds and Fritz were no strangers. JennaRose said they got a few pawpaw plants in the borough and Fritz wanted to “make it happen.”

Jordan said they managed to put the whole festival together in two months and some of the vendors had signed up “late” — meaning the day before.

“We just really winged it,” Jordan said. “We didn’t expect for it to be such a great turnout.”

Sam Mohnkern (right) talks with Duncansville Pawpaw Festival attendees. Ripe pawpaw fruits can be seen in the box in front of Mohnkern. Mirror photo by Rachel Foor

That turnout meant Bill Lloyd, fire chief with the Duncansville Volunteer Fire Department, “didn’t get to see much.” He said the department made 300 chicken dinners to raise money for rescue equipment and were sold out before noon.

“People were hungry,” Lloyd said. “We didn’t know what to expect. This is the first one, and we were worried about the weather. But we thought 300 would be fine for the day. We thought we’d be good until at least two o’clock.”

A common sight at community events, the fire department will be back to the pawpaw festival next year, if only so its chief can finally try the fruit.

“I haven’t gotten to taste one yet,” Lloyd said. “I’ve been too busy.”

The volunteer firefighters weren’t the only ones to underestimate the amount of buzz the festival would generate. At the Ecotopian EarthCare table, where attendees could get free samples of pureed pawpaw, Jordan and JennaRose ran out of spoons three times. Their friend, Sam Mohnkern, who had procured the festival’s pawpaws from West Virginia, sold out of pawpaw trees, seedlings and whole fruit. The festival itself sold out of T-shirts before 11 a.m.

The Duncansville Pawpaw Festival was held at the Duncansville Memorial Park, with lots of families in attendance. A favorite was the merry-go-round. Mirror photo by Rachel Foor

Mohnkern’s friend, Tim Hardy of Alexandria, said he was “blown away” by the turnout.

“There’s been at least 40 people standing in line to buy some pawpaws,” Hardy said. “I don’t know how many trees (Mohnkern has) sold but he sold, I guess, at least a hundred. It’s just so cool.”

Two of those trees went to Windber resident Keith Hogan, who heard about pawpaws through following Ecotopian EarthCare on Facebook.

“I got honeybees recently, and I’ve been trying to upgrade my yard into a more suitable habitat for them,” Hogan said. “I wanted to do more native plants because I’ve been fighting invasives in my yard for a while and it’s frustrating.”

When EarthCare began posting more frequently about pawpaws, Hogan said he decided to look into them and found out they were a native fruit.

Attendees of Duncansville's Inaugural Pawpaw Festival line up for a free sample of the native Appalachian fruit on Sunday. Mirror photo by Rachel Foor

“They have a tropical flavor,” Hogan said. “I thought, ‘That’d be fun.'”

Those who tasted the pawpaw agreed that it had a tropical flavor, with the taste ranging from mango to pineapple to banana.

“It’s been called the poor man’s banana because it would have been a lot more expensive to have a banana in the early 1900s, late 1800s, since shipping was slower,” Jordan Wild said. “So only the wealthy people could have bananas and the poor people were stuck eating pawpaws. I think the tables have turned now.”

Mohnkern, owner of Restoration LandCare, said he’d been working with pawpaws for a while when he connected with Jordan Wild over ecological landscaping. He described the pawpaw as a staple species ecologically developed for the region.

“As we’ve learned, diversity is what makes healthier ecosystems,” Mohnkern said. “So our ecosystems are almost like the rivets on a plane. You take out a rivet here and there, those planes are all right, but over time, it just weakens the whole system.”

Simon Hardy, 12, of Alexandria, works away at whittling a spoon from a piece of birch during the Pawpaw Festival at Duncansville Memorial Park on Sunday. Mirror photo by Rachel Foor

He gave the example of the zebra swallowtail butterfly, which is one species whose larvae only eats pawpaw leaves.

“So if you don’t have pawpaw trees, your zebra swallowtail disappears,” Mohnkern said.

Pittsburgh resident Gabrielle Marsden, whom Jordan invited to set up an informational booth about the swallowtail at the festival, provided more detail on the butterfly to interested attendees. She said it is usually only at most a mile between pawpaw trees, where it lays its eggs, unless there are high temperatures and the butterfly can glide farther on hot updrafts.

“It’s so important to the zebra swallowtail because it’s the only host plant for it,” Marsden said. “It’s very much a specialist butterfly.”

She praised the festival, saying that the organizers had done a phenomenal job.

“This is awesome,” Marsden said. “I wish I’d see more stuff like this in Pittsburgh.”

Fritz already has the date set for next year’s pawpaw Festival — Sept. 21. It will be free, he said, just like the inaugural festival. The Wilds have a few things in mind that they would like to improve.

“We sold out of pawpaws in the first hour and a half of the festival,” Jordan said, adding they had brought about 95 pounds of the fruit.

They also want to set up a larger information booth dedicated to just pawpaws, rather than pawpaws and ecological landscaping, as well as have kids activities.

“It will definitely give me time to dream bigger,” Jordan said.

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.