Apple picking, pumpkin patches, changing leaves and hayrides all come together to make a hallmark fall.

But for Dave Reetz, owner of Mexico Music, fall is all about ukuleles.

Reetz is tuning up for the fourth annual Ukulele Festival, which will be held Saturday from noon to 6 p.m. at Hickory Ridge Orchard.

The festival will feature musical acts such as the Bluegrass Brothers and Sisters and Heirborn Bluegrass Band, but the main attraction, Reetz said, is his ukulele students.

“We just make a lot of noise, and sometimes it sounds like music,” Reetz said with a smile.

Reetz began his career teaching music in public schools, where he figured out that the ukulele is just like a little guitar.

“It’s very easy at the beginning stages to make a pleasing sound and feel like you’re making music,” he said. “That gets them having fun – now they want to learn more.”

Ever since then, Reetz said that Mexico Music has “majored on ukulele.”

A lot of Reetz’s string students now start on the ukulele before moving to other instruments.

“They can sing a song and strum without having to invest a lot of time and money on a bigger instrument,” he said.

The teaching model has worked so well for Reetz and the other teachers at Mexico Music that they have created a curriculum around it and, eventually, the Ukulele Festival.

“We just want to help people succeed with music and life if we can; that’s sort of our mission here,” Reetz said.

For 13-year-old Nolan Ankrom, the ukulele opened the door to the world of music.

“After a while, like three months of playing ukulele, I wanted to start on different instruments and I used the knowledge from my ukulele,” Nolan said. “I sprouted off, and now I can play like 13 different instruments.”

Some of the instruments Nolan can play now include the ukulele, harmonica, guitar, bass, piano, fiddle, six-string ukulele, mandolin, banjo and dulcimer.

“It’s kind of hard to name all of them – you kind of forget after a while,” he said.

Nolan explained that Reetz “saw a spark” in him — so much so that Reetz asked him to become a part-time employee at Mexico Music.

“He wanted to teach me some stuff about music to get me more progressed to kind of make that spark bigger,” he said.

But for Nolan, it’s not just about how many instruments he can play.

“It kind of helped me in school,” Nolan said. “It just makes you memorize stuff a little better, in my opinion.”

Being a musician also means spreading joy for Nolan, and he thinks that one of the best things that a musician can do is play for an audience and get them in the spirit, which makes the upcoming ukulele festival that much more exciting.