PAINTSVILLE’S APPLE FESTIVAL CANCELLED FOR 2021

On Friday night, August 27, at 9:18 P.M., the leading organizers of the Kentucky Apple Festival announced that the 2021 Kentucky Apple Festival in Johnson County, which was to be held on Friday thru Saturday, October 1 and 2; has been canceled and postponed to 2022.

Festival leaders said on their official Facebook they consulted with local health and emergency management officials and made the decision to cancel until October 2022.

The statement by the festival leaders were short and precise, in their one paragraph-four line statement that said as the following:

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

Word spread like wildfire around Johnson County over the weekend, with a majority commenting on the festival’s Facebook message were unhappy to say the least, with a fair amount going as far as calling the cancellation of the Apple Festival this year as a ‘conspiracy by certain leading community figures and officials in Johnson County, who want to do away with the entirely, with others writing that with the second year in a row cancellation of the event, which will now mean a three year period between the festival to being held, which it the end with many believing, will indeed bring about the permanent end of the well known apple festival event in Johnson County.

With the cancellation of the Kentucky Apple Festival that was to start exactly five weeks from the day of the deep-sixing announcement, many in Lawrence County might be asking themselves if the Louisa Septemberfest, which is to start in 18 days (Friday and Saturday, September 10 & 11); if this will be the potential of happening to likely increasing of the calling off the Septemberfest, too, for a second year in a row, even though the Lawrence County Fair was held in July with massive success and large crowds.

But since the Fair, the COVID delta variant outbreak has worsened significantly in Lawrence County and even worse in the rest of the state, especially in eastern Kentucky.

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This is the opinion of the author of the story:

“If our local city and county leaders see this report about the Kentucky Apple Festival in Johnson County for the second year in a row due to the continuing global medical pandemic emergency, that is going into its 18th month in the U.S., if they will clarify what will be the fate of the Louisa Septemberfest this year, too. ASAP”