2008 Florida Strawberry Festival – What an Experience!
The Ball® Brand participated in the Florida Strawberry Festival in February this year. With strawberries being the center of attention, you would never guess that you can also partake in concerts featuring some of country music’s top artists, get thrills from the fair rides, enjoy any food imaginable (our favorite being the famous strawberry shortcake), watch various competitions, contest and shows (and the list goes on). Now we understand why over 100,000 people attend each day of the 12-day festival!
The Strawberry Festival is enriched with tradition dating back to 1930 when festivals were a means to unite communities through celebrations of their harvests. Preserving rich heritage such as this keeps tradition alive. This natural connection between the Strawberry Festival and the Ball® Brand drew us in for a closer look…
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We arrived to the festival grounds on the morning of Wednesday, February 27th driving past vendors setting up their booths. Our stop was the Expo Building where we were greeted by Betty Lucas and her husband Ken who are the chairpersons of the Neighborhood Village. This building houses personal artwork, preserved foods, beautifully decorated cakes, quilts and other contest winners’ handy work. We started by judging the over 50 glistening jar entries for the food preservation contest.
One of the several winning recipes was Strawberry Vinaigrette Dressing prepared by DeeDee Grooms. She has graciously agreed to let us feature her winning recipe on our website.
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In addition to the Ball® Food Preservation Contest, we sponsored a Ball® booth on Thursday, February 28th (Opening Day and Senior Citizen Day) and Friday, February 29th. As you walk into the front doors of the Neighborhood Village you saw a staged kitchen area furnished in 1950’s décor and strawberry trinkets splashed over everything. We greeted people from our booth which was decorated with Ball® products and signs stating “FREE SAMPLES”.
Each person received
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Of all the free stuff, people loved the Freezer Jam Pectin! Many had made it before but for those who hadn’t, we performed 6 hands on Strawberry Freezer Jam Demonstrations.
The excitement from the crowd resounded with ohs and ahs. They wanted to go home to make it immediately with the strawberries purchased from the festival! |
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Fresh strawberries were not hard to find, especially for us. We were fortunate enough to personally meet DeeDee and Carl Grooms who donated freshly picked Treasure strawberries from their family owned and operated farm, Fancy Farms. We were even invited to visit and tour their strawberry fields, and they taught us the difference between a Treasure strawberry (Yum!) and a Festival strawberry.
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We want to thank the Strawberry Festival, and in particular Betty and Ken Lucas and DeeDee and Carl Grooms, for welcoming us into their festival family! We look forward to seeing you next year – if not sooner at the Indiana State Fair!
Sincerely,
The Ball® Strawberry Festival Team