Plant City Strawberry Festival

Plant City bills itself as the Strawberry Capitol of the World. And I believe that may be true. The city is surrounded by strawberry fields - as far as the eye can see.

Once a year they celebrate everything strawberry at The Plant City Strawberry Festival. It started on Thursday so yesterday, off we went to check out another small town, local festival. It turned out to be neither local or small. I would compare it to the Western Fair in London, Ontario for exhibit size. And we have never seen a midway with so many vendors and rides.

A very tiny section of the midway

However, the theme was strawberries and strawberries they featured.

There were lots of strawberries for sale:

And the usual photo-taking opportunity - with a strawberry theme of course:

And strawberry shortcake for sale at several booths. All run by various community and church organizations. I understand that the group who do this booth sell 95,000 strawberry shortcakes during the 10-day fair. That makes a great fund-raiser. You had to line up for this treat. I really got a kick out of this sign:

It is a real gripe of mine - people who get to the cashier at a sales counter and are not ready to pay, especially in the grocery store. Do they think the store is giving the stuff away for free???

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. Now, back to the strawberry shortcake. You build your own. They give you a bowl with either a biscuit or a mini sponge cake in it. Then you head to a giant bowl of chopped strawberries. Take as much as you want:

Then the whipped cream (actually whipped topping, I think):

Then a woman at the entrance to the sitting area plopped a strawberry on top. And voila! strawberry shortcake:

The sugar high from this treat gave us lots of energy to explore many of the exhibits. All the usual players were there. The pain relief people, the foot and back massagers, the cookware and kitchen gadget demonstrators, the sparky T-shirt vendors and on and on. Lots of the booths featured strawberries:

prize-winning strawberries

A strawberry artist

strawberry jewellery

strawberry window hangers

chocolate dipped strawberries (and dipt bacon?!?)

All in all an enjoyable time.