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Florida Blueberry Festival draws big crowds and appetites

 
About 50,000 guests thronged downtown Brooksville for last weekend’s fourth annual Florida Blueberry Festival.
About 50,000 guests thronged downtown Brooksville for last weekend’s fourth annual Florida Blueberry Festival.
Published April 16, 2015

BROOKSVILLE — Upward of 50,000 guests thronged downtown Brooksville for last weekend's fourth annual Florida Blueberry Festival, bringing appetites for all things fruity and blue.

And, along leafy streets dappled with Florida's signature sunshine, they also bought fine arts canvasses, nature photographs, handmade crafts, textiles and homemade goods.

Alas, the Sunshine State's traditional pop-up thunderstorm poked in Sunday afternoon, likely deterring some out-of-town visitors and sending others home early.

But festival president Michael Heard was pleased, nonetheless. "We actually did better than last year (in attendance), about 10 percent over the 42,000 last year," Heard said. "Overall, 90 percent of those at the festival came from out of town, so it was good for the town."

Actual paid attendance wasn't immediately known, she said, because admittance charges made to credit cards won't be returned for a couple of weeks.

"We had rave reviews from all vendors," Heard said. "Many vendors said it was one of the best festivals, one of the best-organized festivals they've attended. I think my sponsors should be really pleased."

On the downside, she noted, "We had lines early in the morning (Saturday) we had not been anticipating. We had to set up more entry gates because of the people coming in. And we're never going to have enough parking."

As for the toothsome attractions, Heard said Hernando High School band volunteers sold 1,000 fresh blueberry pies from Mike's Pies of Tampa.

"It's been our biggest fundraiser for several years," sophomore Brock Law said.

Vendor Virginia Hartley, owner of Ginger's Jams, Jellies and Such of Winter Park, said she sold out of blueberry jam and jelly plus blueberry-pomegranate jam jarred in mugs by early Sunday afternoon. Based on customer comments, she said, "Next year we will have blueberry-jalapeno. Anything hot sells."

As she served customers Sunday, Kathy Gillam of Dade City said blueberry blossom honey was her best seller among choices that also included orange blossom and green swamp.

Gillam's quartet of helpers were also kept on their toes answering requests for honey-sweetened blueberry soda, available by the chilled bottle and six-pack to carry home.

Terry Fowler, visiting from Leslie, Mich., nursed a bottle of the soda as her Palm Harbor relatives tucked into plates of festival fare at one of the 40 umbrella picnic tables in two dining areas.

Said Fowler: "I'm saving up. I plan on buying a pie on the way out."

Right near the pie sellers, Sandra Fitzgerald of Spring Hill Central Rotary Club waved in customers with her blue-polished fingernails as she hawked fresh blueberries, yelling out "Florida grown." By mid-afternoon Sunday, her husband, Mike Fitzgerald, chairman of the group's effort, counted sales at 4,300 half-pints. Rotary set up sales sites at each of four festival gates.

Blueberry wines and beer flowed at a booth staffed by Leadership Hernando, with Seadog blueberry, a craft brew, the tipping favorite. But imbiber Paul Johnson of Brooksville complained good-naturedly that the mug of beer should have contained some fresh blueberries.

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Johnson's companion, Veronica Vasquez, who works in Tampa, praised the festival's layout and its small-town, polite and friendly atmosphere, but bemoaned the lack of a blueberry pie-eating contest.

Heard planned to gather such critiques and assessments from visitors, vendors, in-town businesses and volunteers at a festival wrap-up gathering.

Contact Beth Gray at graybethn@earthlink.net.