It is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to the 2013 Tampa Bay Blueberry Festival. It seems like only yesterday that we hatched the idea for a Blueberry Festival to kick off our blueberry U-pick season here at Keel Farms. The seasons keep passing by, and, believe it or not, this will be our sixth festival.
From the beginning, the Blueberry Festival has been a family event. At any given area, you may run into a number of Keel family members or Curley, for that matter. Many come all the way from Michigan and Illinois to help out for this, our capstone event. Along with them, the staff at Keel Farms and Keel and Curley Winery strives to makes it a fun, family friendly, low-cost event, at which anyone can come and have a great time picking berries, drinking wine or simply relaxing on the festival grounds.
The main attraction, of course, is our blueberries. Our 25 acres will hold thousands of pounds of fresh blueberries — ready to be picked by your family. Although we expect about twice as much fruit this year, we still recommend getting to the festival early to ensure access to the best fruit.
Not to be overshadowed by our blueberries, our famous wine will be sampled and sold throughout the property. This includes two limited-edition wines that will only be available at the festival. One is a barrel-aged Dry Blueberry Wine. Like our traditional Blueberry Wine, this wine is made with Florida blueberries, but the barrel-aging adds an additional complexity for a more traditional dry wine flavor.
The second wine is Strawberry Shortcake Wine. This edition uses strawberry sauce from the St. Clement Catholic Church Strawberry Shortcake stand to produce our first 100% strawberry wine. Look for these amazing wines at the festival.
We’ve expanded our offerings at the Blueberry Festival this year to make it the largest ever. We are excited to host the first Blueberry Pageant to accompany the festival, and the response for that event has been tremendous. Look for the girls Saturday afternoon at the festival. We also added laser tag and an arcade to our usual bounce houses in the kids area to keep the little ones busy. We added some great bands from the area both days, with experts on both wine and blueberries filling in the gaps on the Plant City Observer Stage. Of course, you will find some great craft and food vendors, including some terrific restaurants and food trucks. See our map and schedule on page 4 for more.
We hope you come out and have a terrific time at the 2013 Tampa Bay Blueberry Festival. We are thrilled to host the event for another year and will work tirelessly to make this a fun, family friendly event for all.
See you there!