It has been a banner year for island fruit crops, and Vashon will celebrate the bounty of the season this weekend with CiderFest.

At the heart of the festival is the apple — or more accurately — some 4,000 pounds of island apples. The annual event offers a wide range of activities, including cider pressing, orchard tours and hard cider tasting. Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR) will also get in on the fun by hosting its open house.

Vashon’s chamber of commerce organized the event this year, and Executive Director Jim Marsh spoke to its appeal.

“Apples and cider are very local. It’s a celebration of that,” he said. “The festival appeals to a lot of people’s idea of what it’s like to live in a rural area.”

The Saturday event will include activities at several locations: island orchards, the Village Green, the fire station and, new this year, in front of The Lodges on Vashon.

The festivities will begin at 10 a.m. at several of the venues. Near the Lodges, members of the Vashon Island Fruit Club will press apples and sell fresh cider and homemade apple crisp. Children can get in on the action by pressing apples themselves at the Kids’ Press.

At the Village Green, additional fruit club experts will help islanders identify apples they have growing on their property; people should bring a few samples of each kind to help with identification. The fruit club will also take orders for trees that grow well on Vashon.

Following a different theme, VIFR will open its doors to the public, also at 10 a.m. Young visitors will have a chance to meet firefighters, sit in a fire truck and play in a fire engine bounce house. Additionally, Airlift Northwest will provide one of its helicopters if it is not needed to respond to an emergency and the weather is favorable. The open house will also include a Prepare Fair, with information on several aspects of preparing for emergencies and disasters, including tips on pet preparedness and approaches to stocking adequate food, water and medicines. Volunteers from the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and the Neighborhood Emergency Response Organization (NERO) will also be on hand to answer questions.

In the world of cider, the two orchards offering tours will do so in the late morning and early afternoon. The owners of Nashi Orchards, Jim Gerlach and Cheryl Lubbert, will lead guests through their property on Wax Orchard Road, where they grow six to seven tons of fruit each year, including apples, pears and quince. They will also share information about how they grow their fruit sustainably. Their business is certified as salmon safe, Lubbert noted, which means that all of their practices must be safe for the local bodies of water. Guests will also receive tips on pruning and organic insect repellants and meet the orchard’s sheep. Samples of perry — made from pears — and cider will also be offered, including the orchard’s popular hot spiced perry.

Dragon’s Head Cider, on 107th Avenue, will also participate in the tours, offering guests a chance to see many of its 3,000 pear and apple trees growing on 7 acres. Laura Cherry, who owns the business with her husband Wes Cherry, said the tour will feature considerable time for questions and answers, catering to the interests of those who attend. They will also offer a tasting of their beverages.

Marsh, of the chamber of commerce, said the schedule of events was set intentionally, with family-friendly events early and activities for adults later in the day, when a hard cider tasting will take place. In that event, held at the Lodges on Vashon, Nashi Orchards, Dragon’s Head Cider, Vashon Winery and two cideries from off-island will offer their beverages, and The Seattle Distilling Company will offer cider cocktails. Food will be available, and there will be music by Vashon’s Rumba Strips, playing jazz and New Orleans-style street music, as well as the popular rock band Danny Newcomb and The Sugarmakers.

The day-long event is a fundraiser for the Vashon Island Fruit Club, which began in 2004 with approximately a dozen members. Now, according to Jerry Gehrke, a founding member and the group’s treasurer, the club has grown to 172 members, most of them “suburban enthusiasts,” he said, with no large commercial growers among them.

The mission of the group is to educate islanders on how to grow fruit trees, Gehrke said, and Ron Weston, a fellow founding and current member, noted that CiderFest is helpful in achieving that goal.

“The first step … is to hook people’s interest,” Weston said. “This weekend will help set that hook.”

Gehrke stressed that while the club has grown considerably over the years, they would like to add new members.

“We especially like to draw new people in. That is what keeps a club vibrant,” he added.

The men noted that in the days of the Mosquito Fleet, the island was a major commercial fruit growing location for many types of types of fruit: strawberries, gooseberries, currants, peaches and apples, among them. But when the highway system was introduced to the state, Eastern Washington eclipsed Vashon as a fruit-growing center. Still, remnants of that time can still be found on Vashon, including many old apple trees. Indeed, more than 100 apple varieties grow on the island — many of them old, but several new varieties are thriving along with them.

Choosing the type of apple is an area where the club can be particularly helpful to people who may wish to grow their own fruit, the men said. Weston noted that should islanders want to grow Red Delicious or Fuji apples, for example, they would not be successful. Conversely, Honey Crisps, a relatively new variety sold commercially and known for its flavor and abundant juice, does well on the island. Many other varieties produce a considerable amount of fruit as well, though they are not as widely known as those sold commercially.

“Most varieties we sell are not those in the grocery store,” Weston added. “Trees that grow well in Yakima do not necessarily do well here.”

As fall settles in, several growers concur that this was an excellent year for fruit — a fact confirmed simply by walking past many of the island’s apple trees, heavy with fruit and more lying on the ground. Gehrke attributes this year’s abundance of apples, as well as plums, pears and berries, to the warm spring and plentiful pollinators.

“If you get through the pollination period, that is the starting point. Nothing will happen without pollination,” he said. “Without pollination, blossoms will just fall and no fruit will be formed.”

This year’s harvest is good news for CiderFest and means the volunteers picking the two tons of apples in the coming days will have an ample supply to choose from as they prepare for the celebration — and for the possibility of planting the seed in others to grow fruit on their own property and reap the benefits.

“As nice as a piece of fruit looks at the grocery store,” Gehrke said, “it does not taste as good as the one you picked from a tree.”

All about CiderFest:

Activities at the Village Green and fire station will run from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Cider pressing and other activities near The Lodges on Vashon will be from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Orchard tours will meet at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. at both participating orchards.

Cider tasting at The Lodges Pavilion will be from 3 to 6 p.m. with Danny Newcomb and the Sugarmakers playing at 4 p.m.

For more information about CiderFest, see vashonchamber.com/pages/VashonCiderFest.

For more information about the fruit club, see vashonislandfruitclub.wordpress.com.