The Porch: Porter Peach Festival Continues Tradition Of Giving Back To Community

The small town of Porter is welcoming 10,000 people to the area for its annual Peach Festival.

The three-day event dates back to 1967.

"The community came together and decided to host the Porter Peach Festival to help raise funds to build a civic center," said this year's Miss Peachy Keen, Jennifer Ledezma.

58 years later, Porter's cream of the crop continues to help improve the town and give back to the community.

"A lot of the green space in town and a lot of the good community spaces came through Peach Festival funds, so this is very, very important for our town as a whole," said Brian Livesay, a local farmer at Livesay Orchards.

His parents, aunt, and uncle own and operate the business which is the largest peach orchard in the state.

"This has been a really good year," said Livesay. "We have got some young trees that were not super heavy set on peaches, so we have some really pretty peaches to go through this year."

Peaches have been grown in Porter since before Oklahoma was a state. The first commercial peach orchard was planted in 1890 and belonged to a man named Ben Marshall.

A century later, the orchards continued to prosper.

"I found an old ad book from 1990 and there were eight or nine different peach orchards in Porter listed in the ad book back then," Livesay added. "We are the only one that is still commercially growing."

The family sells its peaches in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. The orchard also has a Farm Market on its property where the family sells its peaches as well as homemade peach jam, peach butter, peach salsa, peach BBQ sauce and a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.

"We have a good supply of watermelons, then we have got tomatoes, we just have all kinds of different vegetables and stuff that we grow that we have over here," Livesay said.

The store is open for shopping during the Porter Peach Festival. It is located at 39232 E 231st St. South in Porter.

The orchard also donates peaches for the annual prize peach auction on Saturday, July 20, starting at 12:15 p.m. on the Main Stage.

"Normally, if you are going into an auction, you are buying the really best of the best," Livesay continued, saying, "You are looking for color, you are looking for size, you are looking for shape, and uniformity."

Other staples of the Porter Peach Festival are the parade that starts at 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 20, and the culinary contest. There are also games, food trucks, live music, a classic car show, and antique tractor pulls.

Peach Royalty will be out there all weekend, too, interacting with the community. 

"It is an honor to be representing the town of Porter. I have been here all my life, so I enjoy seeing the community come together and help celebrate our rich history and tradition," Ledezma said.

A legacy that earned this small town the honor of being named the official Peach Capital of Oklahoma.

For a full list of festival events, click here.