Florida Strawberry festival

Yesterday, the weather was perfect, sunny, warm, and a little breeze but we did not go to the beach… We woke up and had breakfast early. By 9 AM, we were out the door… this doesn't happen too often since we retired!

We went to the Florida Strawberry festival in Plant City. This is about an hour drive from our current location.

 

The parking cost was a decent $5 and we were parked on grass. They had a shuttle running between the parking and the entrance gate. We got on the bus and went round and round,  round and round, (oups sorry my mind drifted away for a second :-) )

At the gate the entrance fee was $10 each. According to the attendant in the bus, there are a million people coming to this festival every year and it has a huge monetary impact for the small town of Plant city. Talking about Plant city, you can take a nice leisurely drive where you will see fields after fields of strawberry fields forever (oups, drifted away again...).  From the end of January, there are always people picking up the berries…. Big business for sure (over 365 millions in revenue per year)!

We were mainly going there to see some shows and attended 3 of them. We enjoyed the FREE shows even if it was mainly country music… we are not big fans of country music but any live show always make it more appealing.

The first show was Jay Taylor and his band, he is from the smallish town of Duette Florida, close by, but has moved to Nashville which is the Mecca of country music.

In the tent, it was like a cotton field...

The second show was the Sweeney Family Band and had a lot of comedy involved. They looked and sang like hillbillies but are from Florida so they made a point of stating that they are not Hillbillies but rather swampbillies! :) I thought all their tunes sounded the same with only the lyric changing. I don’t have the best ear for music so it’s probably just me!

The last group we saw was Dennis Lee and his band, he is a performer who has been around (even to Canada) and was getting the crowd involved.

We enjoyed all 3 shows.  Between 2 shows, there was a women sitting beside my wife that was on her cell, talking to someone a few feet away in the same tent! They could see each others, it was like they were skyping!

After the last show, we  bought some fries for lunch at one of the boot and as all the tables were occupied we asked one person if the empty seats at his table was free. He said they were our seats. We talked a little until he noticed our French accent and then started to talk to us in French. Surprisingly he is from the same area in Québec as us (Outaouais). He was sitting with his wife and 3 grand children who were on their march break and were taking an extra week to visit their grand-parents. They also have a trailer in a park close to where we are and spend their winters there. He gave us few pointers that we will be looking at in future years.

After lunch we went around to visit some of the booths but it was getting so crowded that after a short period of time, I proposed we get back home.

Naturally before leaving, we had to sample the main attraction of the fest… we bought 2 fresh strawberry milk shake ($5 each) it was a good source of dairy product and fruit… ya right!