By Amber Jurgensen | Associate Editor
By far, the biggest event to take place in Plant City all year long is the Florida Strawberry Festival.
A community tradition for decades, the festival began in 1930, when the newly organized Plant City Lions Club decided to create an event to celebrate the harvest of strawberries. After the festival stopped for six years during World War II, the American Legion Post 26 helped the Lions Club revive the festival in 1948.
Since then, civic clubs and community have volunteered, organized and participated in the festival, making an event that attracts attendees from throughout the United States. In 2011, the Florida Strawberry Festival snagged the No. 35 spot in Venues Today’s Top 50 Fairs in North America.
When it began, the festival lasted only one day. Eventually, it grew to three and later reached its current length of 11 days. In 2012, 525,300 entered through its new gate, built four years ago, to shop through the 600 vendors, take a spin on carnival rides and, of course, sample Plant City’s famous crop. The number of attendees has increased by 12% since 2011. This year, the festival committee expects just as many visitors as last year.
“I still remember the year we hit 30,000 people,” Sandee Sytsma, a festival director, says. “We thought that was huge.”
“We’re still hometown,” says KeeLee Tomlinson, media representative for the festival. “We’re big. But we are all about the community, and we couldn’t do this without our residents.”
THE ENTERTAINMENT
Gone are the days of simple, hometown entertainment at the Florida Strawberry Festival. Saturday night entertainment once featured local square dancers and thrilling wrestling matches that featured grapplers from Tampa. Country music artists also used to play one show on Saturday, but they weren’t the big-name, pop-country hybrid acts of today’s lineup. They performed on a flatbed trailer in the high football school stadium.
Throughout the years, the entertainment committee has brought bigger and more famous stars to the festival. The entertainment committee brainstorms on headliners they would like to see at the festival. From there, they contact the music artists’ agents and organize an appearance. There is a $2 million budget to bring in the acts.
This year, the festival has pulled in some major names to perform on its Wish Farms soundstage. Blake Shelton, Alan Jackson, Gloriana, Foreigner, Bret Michaels, Justin Moore, Martina McBride and Trace Adkins are among the impressive list of performers. They will be performing throughout the festival, with two major performances daily.
THE PAGEANT
Chelsea Bowden, the 2012 Florida Strawberry Festival Queen, is related to two former queens, grandmothers Ruby Jean Redman and Barbara Bowden — a first for the longstanding festival tradition.
This year’s pageant will be held in the Evelyn and Batista Madonia Agricultural Center.
Originally, the pageant was held at Tomlin Middle School. The band shell was perfect for its contestants to take the stage.
“Tomlin was beautiful,” Gail Lyons, pageant chairman for the Lions Club, says. “It was absolutely beautiful. It added a quaintness to the pageant.”
But, as more parents, friends and spectators came to see the contestants, the pageant outgrew the 900 seats at Tomlin. This year, 25 girls will be competing for the crown at the Ag Center.
“Every girl raised in Plant City wants to be a strawberry queen,” says Tomlinson, who placed in the top 10 both times she competed.
THE COMPETITIONS
The thousands of volunteers who help set up for the festival have a huge reason to be thankful for the Ag Center. Not only does it house the pageant, but also it will live up to its name by hosting agricultural competitions and shows, which should save a tremendous amount of set-up time.
Before, a collection of tents had to be set up three weeks in advance.
“We would pray for no wind,” Sytsma remembers.
Construction on the 33,000-square-foot center started in 2011, and the festival celebrated its completion with a ribbon cutting for the two pavilions in October. The pavilion on the west side of the center is named after Ed and Myrtle Lou Swindle, and the one on the east side after the Astin family.
The competitions and shows include a poultry show, rabbit show, dairy show, livestock judging, swine show and sale, steer show and lamb breed show, among others.
“It’s fun to watch it grow,” Systma says of the festival’s changes throughout its history. “I don’t think anyone realized it would grow this big.”ActualSpy