BARRY, Ill. (KHQA) — The Barry Apple Festival has become a cornerstone of pike county, and features tons of entertainment such as carnival rides, live music, and many different vendors.
The festival is in their second year of making the event four days, and kicks off thursday with the apple pie tasting contest.
Barry apple festival chairman andrew conley says they are excited for another great year, and expect another great turnout.
“Barry has a strong community, and the nice thing that I love about the festival is not only do the community members get to spend time together, we get to show the beauty of our town with other communities, they get to come in and experience what it’s like to be in Barry,” Conley said.
The festival will also crown it’s newest Barry Apple Festival queen on Friday.
Current queen Brooklyn Stolte says the pageant is a great opportunity for local girls.
“It’s a good way for young girls to express their beauty and their confidence, and it’ll be a really good pageant, we have five girls for the queen and five girls for the junior miss, so it’ll be a good pageant,” said Stolte.
The festival will also have a 5k race on Saturday, and will finish with the car show on Sunday.
The Pike County Sheriff’s Office says they will have extra patrols on hand for after the Apple Festival car show.
Last year an incident turned into a riot-like scene.
After a crash that happened in pike county, extra deputies were on hand for the yearly tradition of cars doing burnouts down County Road 4.
After one driver was approached by a deputy and handed a citation, a large crowd surrounded the deputy’s car.
The deputy proceeded to mace multiple subjects, leading to a riot-like scene and damage occurring to the deputy’s car.
KHQA asked the festival committee for details about the safety of this year’s festival.
They told KHQA they do not support the burnouts, and declined to comment about the incident from last year.
