Apple Festival cancelled for second year

By TONY FYFFE

BSN Editor

PAINTSVILLE — Now you see it, now you don’t.

Officials with the Kentucky Apple Festival of Johnson County announced Friday that this year’s event, scheduled to begin Oct. 1, was cancelled.

“After consulting with local health officials and emergency management, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the Kentucky Apple Festival until 2022,” Apple Festival officials said on the event’s Facebook page. “There were a number of factors involved in this situation that left us with no other option.”

The rise in the number of new COVID-19 cases in Johnson and surrounding counties likely played a key role in the decision to cancel the annual Paintsville event, which was also shuttered in 2020 due to the pandemic.

A total of 857 new coronavirus cases were reported in Johnson, Lawrence, Floyd and Martin counties, including 232 in Johnson, from Tuesday, Aug. 24, through Monday, Aug. 30.

Apple Festival officials announced in April that this year’s event would be held Oct. 1-2, saying they were “already working hard to fulfill our promise to make this year's festival better than ever!”

The decision to cancel the event drew nearly 200 comments on the Apple Festival’s Facebook page, with all but a few condemning the action and some suggesting that festival board members resign.

The 2021 Apple Festival would have been the second fall festival in the Big Sandy region, following Lawrence County Septemberfest, which is slated Sept. 10-11 in Louisa.