Strawberry Festival draws thousands

Photo by Mary Kofford

ENDLESS STRAWBERRIES: Clint Snyder (left) and George Simmons (cap), both firefighters from the Happy Valley Fire Protection District, pile up fruit, ice cream and shortcake servings at last Saturday’s Strawberry Festival. About 5,000 were served.

For more than 50 years the Happy Valley Strawberry Festival has been a tradition, growing from its roots as the “Strawberry Social” in the early 1900s as a welcome home event for returning WWI service men and women.

At this year’s event, which took place last Saturday at Happy Valley Elementary School, volunteers sold and served close to 5,000 servings of strawberry shortcake. Even though some extra strawberries were purchased to avoid running out, the event became “berryless” at around 3:30 p.m.

“We thought that by having it on Memorial Day weekend, we might lose attendance, but it actually helped. People who did’t go away for the weekend came to the festival,” said Gary Jackson, one of the event organizers and treasurer of the Happy Valley Community Foundation.

“The strawberries were wonderful this year; they were big and ripe. But they cost 30 percent more than last year, so we had to raise the price of a serving from $5 to $6,” said Jackson.

To satisfy the strawberry cravings of festival-goers, 330 flats of berries, 2,500 packages of shortcake and 105 3-gallon buckets of vanilla ice cream were ordered. Unused shortcake was donated to the Good News Mission in Redding.

Jackson estimates around 6,000 attendees were there to enjoy the event which featured more than 90 vendor and information booths.

“It took more volunteers this year because we opened up the baseball diamond for parking. We had to really scramble to get enough volunteers,” said Jackson.

After paying for festival expenses, the money raised through selling strawberry shortcake goes toward grants to be awarded by the Happy Valley Community Foundation.

Jackson’s wife, Barbara, and the other members of the foundation were also integrally involved in producing the event.

“Everyone enjoys it. It has a hometown fun atmosphere,” Jackson said.