There are about 200 types of apples grown across the United States, according to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center, and if all goes to plan, the variety of vendors at the Mars Applefest this year will be just a few dozen shy of that number.

About 140 vendors are slated to line Pittsburgh Street and Grand Avenue from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 7 for the 38th annual event.

In recent years, Applefest organizers pushed to diversify the types of vendors that take part in Applefest, attracting more craft vendors so visitors can peruse a wide variety of food, wares, jewelry, beauty products and more.

“We were able to attract a few more last year, and this year it seems that we’ve attracted even more, which we are pretty happy about, and we’ve also tried to attract more apple-themed vendors in accordance with the name of the event,” Mars Applefest chairperson Brian Fleeson said.

Just as in previous years, event organizers expect around 4,000 people to visit.

“Applefest is a main staple in the events in our town of Mars on an annual basis,” Mayor Gregg Hartung said. “On the first Saturday of every October, we look forward to hosting it in our town, and the cooperation we get from the coordinators of it, the Rich-Mar Rotary, is really special in terms of it benefiting the Rotary plus all of the businesses and the town in general.”

Media coordinator Harry Austin said he looks forward to the crowd.

“The more the merrier because that makes the event fun,” Austin said. “When you get a crowd of people together, it makes it a fun event.

“When you see the kids running around blowing bubbles or getting face painting or temporary tattoos, it’s a fun event for young families.”

Austin is a member of a branch of the Rich-Mar Rotary Club that has organized the Mars Applefest for about five years.

According to Austin, there are three goals for this year’s Mars Applefest: “to provide a wonderful event to the Mars community, to support the vendors who have engaged with us, and to have the Rich-Mar Rotary become more visible to our overall community.”

“Our main goal is having a large crowd that can enjoy what we have put together,” Austin said. “We want to provide an event that will attract a lot of folks from the community to spend a few hours to support the vendors.”

In addition to supporting local businesses, Austin hopes to spread the knowledge of what a Rotary club is and “what Rotary clubs do for the community.’

“I ask a lot of my friends if they know what Rotary clubs are and they say ‘no,’” Austin said. “These are business folks that want to be able to give back to their communities, and Rotary is a good organization to do that through.”

This year’s Mars Applefest will be a little different from past years. There won’t be live music or a schedule of events.

“That would be our biggest change for this year,” Fleeson said. “We talked some things over and made some observations in years past, and we came to the decision that what we would really like to do is, the area where we had the bands play, maybe use that as an area where people can sit down and (eat) the food they get from the vendors right there and spend a little more time versus walking through and leaving.”

Instead, Pittsburgh DJ Company will provide the musical entertainment, and a pavilion tent will be set up in the grassy area by the Flying Saucer. This will provide visitors a place to sit and eat, relax and take shelter from the weather.

“It always seems to rain, either a drizzle or a heavy downpour,” Austin said. “We didn’t really have a place for people to take cover under.”

According to Rich-Mar Rotary Club secretary Cindy Fleeson, club will sell apples at its booth after they noticed that “there weren’t as many apples at Applefest as there used to be.”

“I called, this year and last year, 10 different orchards in the area to encourage them to come and have a booth at Applefest and they said they were short-staffed and weren’t able to spare a person to spend a whole day at an event like that, so we decided that we’ll sell apples,” she said.

Funds raised by the Rich-Mar Rotary Club benefit the Lighthouse Foundation, Harvest Street Mission, Hosanna Industries, MHY Family Services, YMCA Camp Spencer, Inspired Hearts and Hands, North Hills Cares and the ARC Butler.

Additionally, the Mars Area History and Landmark Society will be open for tours and train rides during Applefest.

One mission that the Rich-Mar Rotary Club continues to conduct are sock and glove drives for Pittsburgh and Butler County-based charities. During this year’s Applefest, a donation box will be available for donations of gloves, hats, scarves and warm winter socks to be given to Harvest Street Mission, Robin’s Home and Glade Run Lutheran Services.

During Applefest, the Rich-Mar Rotary Club will have a booth in front of the Mars National Bank where donations can be dropped off.

“They need something to really protect their feet,” said Terri Fleeson, Rich-Mar Rotary member and organizer of the sock drive. “Every organization that we’ve worked with (says) that is the number one most critical thing that the homeless need in the winter.”

Collections of the gloves, hats, scarves and warm socks will also take place in the Mars area from Oct. 16 through the end of the month and in the Mars Area School District from Oct. 16 to 20 with a bin at each school.

“Rotary likes to support existing organizations. We don’t think there’s any need to reinvent the wheel when there are very good organizations out there that are helping the homeless, food insecurity, things like that,” Cindy Fleeson said. “We like to support that not only financially, but by doing things like drives and any kind of physical projects we can do.”

Admission and parking are free for Applefest. Overflow parking will be directed to Vogel Disposal on Brickyard Road where there will be a shuttle service. There will be parking lot attendants directing parking. For those requiring handicap-accessible parking, notify parking lot attendants.