Keep your fork, folks, there's pie.

Pie-eating will be among the tasty tutorials headlining this region's first Urban Apple Festival from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 10 at the Union Project in Highland Park.

But forks will not come out until after fest-goers wander through the "Great Hall of Apples and Cider," tasting and buying crisp fall apples and fresh-pressed cider offered by local pickers and pressers, and not until after an audience-participation show featuring Johnny Appleseed himself. Playing the folk hero is actor/author Hank Fincken, veteran of 1,000 Appleseed incarnations nationwide.

Admission is $3, $2 for children.

Fest organizer Don Gibbon, of Pittsburgh's Sierra Club and a leadership committee member of Slow Food Pittsburgh, plans to breathe new life into the fading tradition of community apple festivals.

He is taking the concept into modern times by bringing the festival into the city, the better to mount a campaign against mass marketing of waxed, inordinately sized apples grown thousands of miles away, and to return the focus to Pennsylvania, ranked fourth among apple-producing states.

"Until the mid-1900s towns and villages all through the northeastern United States held fall festivals celebrating the healthy rivalry among local orchard men and women. All that got eroded around 1950 when Washington State co-opted the image of the 'real apple' in all its colors and flavors that people once knew, and replaced it with the perfect, bright red Red Delicious. Walt Disney contributed to the hijacking by giving Snow White what appears to be a Red Delicious. In the real story it was a white apple with one blushing cheek.

"We are fighting back against this hype -- now for imported apples grown worldwide -- by bringing local orchardists to town, so that Pittsburghers can experience the freshness and sheer pleasure of all the best real apples grown right here."

The event will also feature a Johnny Appleseed look-alike contest, with contestants from local theater groups, and music by the Celtic roots group Devilish Merry.

The fest's co-sponsors are the Sierra Club, Slow Food Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, along with the East End Food Co-Op and Sustainable Table.

Show up with your pie

Culminating the program, Mr. Gibbon says, will be the "second annual Pro-Am Apple Pie Baking Contest." (The first took place last fall at the East Liberty year-round market.)

"The pie-eating happens after pies are judged at 1 p.m. Winning entries from home kitchens, restaurants, chefs and culinary schools will go for two bucks a generous slice. The price includes a scoop of ice cream donated by the city's new 'all natural' ice cream shop, Oh Yeah, in Shadyside. Consider the a la mode concept in terms of a French upside-down pie of caramelized Golden Delicious apples, which is the entry planned by Chef Eric Chabou of Ma Provence restaurant in Squirrel Hill." Pastry chefs signed on include April Gruver of Vanilla Pastry Studio, Erika Idler of Eleven and Barbara Ferguson of Fraiche Confections.

Among the celebrity judges are Post-Gazette drama critic Chris Rawson and bigBurrito executive Chef Bill Fuller. Mr. Gibbon's wife, Linda Bazan, was a contest juror last year, channeling the voice of Julia Child, and he has persuaded her to do it again, perhaps using the words of 16th-century poet Robert Green, who talked ladies into things by telling them, "Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes."

There are two categories, one for pros and one for home cooks.

"Just show up with your pie by noon," says Mr. Gibbon, "and declare yourself pro or amateur. There'll be lots of prizes, some made up on the spot, like 'most like Grandma's,' 'All-American,' 'best-looking,' 'heaviest,' 'most exotic apples,' 'best crust.' Bribes to the judges will not be noticed. Cheering sections are encouraged. Pies made with Red Delicious apples will be turned away."

An enthusiastic pie-baker himself, Mr. Gibbon thinks that little has changed since the New York Times declared 105 years ago that "pie-eating is the secret of our strength as a nation." He depends on the tart Stayman Winesap to power his own pies.

"We are planning on winning the cider and pie contests," says Don Kretschmann of Kretschmann Farm near Zelienople, one of the country's largest organic veggies-by-subscription plans. The Kretschmann strategy is secret, but it involves relatives and Sally's Cider Press in nearby Harmony. The 100-year-old press pasteurizes its cider with ultraviolet light, rather than by heating it, a selling point to many who think boiling the juice changes its flavor.

No secret is the fact that Mr. Kretschmann "had an awful year for apples." So his pie apples may not all be his farm's super-crisp, red-striped Libertys.

All growers reported much reduced yields this season, whether large historic orchards such as the Soergel family farms in Franklin Park, growing apples since 1850, or The Little Orchard, in Bridgeville, "a backyard operation" owned by Harry Meyer Jr., that has produced a surprising variety of apples for two generations.

"It was a bad year," said Mr. Meyer. "We had a terrible April freeze, then summer drought. Many varieties just didn't appear."

Of his "antique" varieties, Mr. Meyer says he got only four of Thomas Jefferson's favorite Esopus Spitzenberg, a bright red Jonathan type. "Those are off-limits in the refrigerator." He got none of George Washington's Newtown Pippin or of Cox's Orange Pippin, which "look terrible -- they are a russeted apple [matte brown skin, thus difficult to market] -- but taste very well."

Weather problems mean Mr. Meyer will sell five or six varieties, rather than the usual dozen or more, from his self-service stand. "The honor system works for apples; I wouldn't want to sell beer that way. My neighbors take it seriously, and I tell people who are loading their paper bags too light, 'You fill that up. You'll give me a bad name.'"

But there is nothing untended about local apples ripening to harvest.

Orchardists buy rootstock with the variety they select grafted onto it and wait several years for the "cloned" trees to mature.

No one has 30-foot ladders anymore, Mr. Meyer says; trees are bred to be often no taller than 15 feet to make picking easier. Even so, skilled pickers are ever harder to find and keep.

Many varieties are naturally biennial, producing lavishly one year and little the next. Growers commonly use nontoxic chemicals to even out the cycle, says Tim Hileman of Kistako Farm in Apollo, though organic growers do not.

Different varieties require specific sprays applied at different times to keep them healthy. Varieties ripen at their appointed times from July through the end of October, but Mother Nature may alter the tune.

So call first if you are scouting the popular new hybrid Honeycrisp (season's over) or the gnarly heirloom Northern Spy (should be in good supply).

Challenging but tastier

The East is more humid and harbors pests not found in the drier West. "Growing apples, particularly organic apples, is a much greater challenge here," says Mr. Kretschmann.

"Right off the bat, the plum curculio [voracious little beetle and prime tree fruit pest] doesn't exist west of the Rockies. And people don't realize that everything west of Nebraska is technically a desert. Under those conditions it's a lot easier to control fungus diseases -- one of the main reasons orchardists in the East spray."

Reed Soergel of Soergel's Orchards, until recently an all-conventional orchardist, is "getting his feet wet" with organics. He is hoping to add three organic varieties as early as next season.

"One technique we're using is an anti-pest technique called mating disruption. ... The way it works is you load the trees with female insect sex scent; this confuses the males so much -- how hard is that?" he says, laughing, -- "that they don't know where they are and can't find the females."

If more challenging, Eastern apples can be tastier. "Western soils tend to be sandier, and those sandy soils give less flavor," Don Jantzi, longtime orchard foreman at the Rodale Institute Experimental Farm in Kutztown, Berks County, told the institute's online "New Farm Magazine." "Eastern growers also have a broader range of varieties to choose from than their Western counterparts and tend to be more independent. Out West, the marketing programs are so advanced that growers are more locked into a certain set of varieties."

"And as anyone who's been to a supermarket lately knows," opines the article's writer, Laura Sayre, "those dominant Western varieties -- Red and Gold Delicious, Gala, Fuji -- have grown steadily more tasteless over the years as they have been further selected for color, uniformity, and durability under shipment."

What goes in the pie

For apple pies, some swear by mixing varieties -- tart with sweet, firm with soft. A Jonagold that holds its shape in cooking can be paired with a Macintosh that will subside, making a juicier filling. (Very sweet apples like the Red Delicious tend to cook up bland and mushy.)

Another way to mix and match, Linda Soergel suggests, is to go for a harmonious blend of sugar, acid and tannin. Try combining an acidic Northern Spy or Granny Smith with a gentle, sweet-tart like Golden Delicious.

Pie purists Jan Simmons of Simmons Farm in Canonsburg and Harry Meyer prefer sticking to one apple. For Ms. Simmons that's a Winesap; Mr. Meyer favors the Cortland.

Leslie Hood of Schramm's Farms in Harrison City notes, "The older generation loves the Northern Spies and the Winesaps." For true old-time pucker, there is the Granny Smith, not easy to find locally, but second-generation grower Carolyn Cowher, of Dawson's Orchard in Enon Valley, is growing it. And do serve that pie with its natural ally, a chunk of aged cheddar.

For contest details and more, visit www.slowfoodpgh.com.