EVENT Highlight

From Food to Fun, Strawberry Festival Has Your Jam

- MATT NORMAN

“I GREW UP in the rows.” This is how Jennifer Morgan describes her childhood in the strawberry fields of Plant City. She is now part of the team that organizes the Strawberry Festival. Even though she grew up in the area and has attended the festival many times, since becoming part of the team she has found that the event, and its impact on the community, is so much bigger than she ever knew. She says, “To now have a 30,000-foot view of the event is truly amazing.”

In the early 1900s, a hard freeze hit Florida. Many crops died. Around this time some people in Plant City discovered that strawberries could grow quite well in the cold. In fact, strawberries stabilized the economy, if not rescued it. In 1930 the Plant City Lions Club decided to celebrate the harvest and the berry that had so impacted their community. Thus the Strawberry Festival was born.