Day #103 – Plant City Strawberry Festival

Plant City, Florida

I’d been looking forward to this festival for weeks!  Kelly spotted the brochure in a restaurant.  Who could resist that strawberry, all dressed up in a tuxedo and top hat?  This festival was celebrating its 75th year and I intended to be there!  I enticed Kelly with the line-up of famous country singers and entertainers.  I invited her to watch the lambs jump, the pigs race, and the meat sizzle.  I showed her the map, with an entire tent sponsored by Cool Whip.  As a final tease, I whispered, “Strawberry shortcake with local berries,” in her ear.  She picked today to endure the pain – Mel Tillis and Bill Engvall.

The day was warm – nearly 70 – with sun and a slight breeze.  Parking was easy – they put all the pickups in their own area.  You could tell by the organization that they’d been doing this awhile.  The grounds were huge!  There were no port-a-janes – they had real cinderblock rest rooms, with attendants to keep everything clean.  Hand washing stations were set up at convenient locations.  The midway held dozens of rides, including four Ferris wheels.  And, the smell of yummy food was everywhere!

We looked at quilt displays, sampled cheese, ate smoked turkey and BBQ pork, ate chocolate-covered strawberries, ate strawberry shortcake, ogled the John Deere tractors, viewed a display showing how strawberries were grown in the past, and saw how they are grown today.  Grown men tried to sell us miracle cooking pots and carpet that practically cleaned itself.  We resisted the pots, but bought a rug.

We missed the lamb jumping, but were in plenty of time for the pig races.  I got myself a good seat in the upper bleachers while Kelly scouted for popcorn.  Poor girl had to sit elsewhere because the stands filled up so quickly.  

The warm-up event was a riot.  There were huge plastic pigs, filled with air, of several different sizes.  Anyone over the age of 5 was welcome to straddle a pig and bounce/ride/race it down the track.  There were several heats, divided by age.  It looked like a lot of fun, but I didn’t want to lose my seat, so I just watched and cheered.  

For the main event, there were three pig races.  The first set of racers was young domestic pigs - five of them, about three months old.  They were very eager and ran around the track pretty quickly.  The second race was for older domestic pigs, about six months old.  They ran so fast I couldn’t get any pictures of them.  The last race was comprised of full-grown Asian Pot-Bellied pigs.  They were very slow.  My favorite moseyed around the track and stopped just short of the finish line when he found something good to snuffle.  He didn’t cross the line until another pig bumped his butt.

We thought about going to see Mel Tillis perform in the late afternoon – there were lots of free seats.  But the day had gotten pretty hot and we had gotten pretty tired, so we headed home.  Kelly was so wiped she was in bed by 7:30, skipping supper.

This festival is a good example of why I’m camping my way around North America.  The festival was a wonderful way to celebrate something very important to many Americans – strawberries.  While the first crop was lost to frost, this second crop held promise and hope for a struggling community.  Our attendance not only supported the economy, but gave us a unique opportunity to mingle with the farmers who grow our food.  The FFA (Future Farmers of America) kids selling water, displaying their canned preserves and beautiful quilts, and demonstrating the new growing methods, are our future.  How could we not go to the festival?