( sweet sweeps of strawberries, a festival too )

sweet sweeps of strawberries, a festival too

by jennifer hetrick

     

rounding the corner is a fruit-happy introduction to summer with the jollyview jam strawberry festival at 1560 memorial highway in oley saturday, june 4 from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.

     

this is the fourth strawberry festival sponsored by prout’s jollyview farm, a family operation based around a natural, organic approach to producing food for locals on its stretching acres.

     

“not a lot of people knew we had strawberries,” jillian prout says in explaining how the festival stirred into existence on the expanse of this berks county agricultural landscape.

    

wanting to get the word out about the strawberries for sale, a festival seemed fitting, especially because prout is a big advocate of educating the consumer about the better quality of freshly picked food meeting the family plate.

her husband ben claimed he’d never crawl down low to pick a strawberry again, since he spent his childhood summers plucking the iconic red fruit on his grandfather’s land. but marrying jillian meant ben would have to abandon that hard-pressed claim. prout says that in-season, she eats strawberries for breakfast and adores savoring their bursting flavor which is often absent from store-bought produce, traveling far from the more corporate farms where food is raised for chain grocery stores.

the festival involves a $5 parking fee, with a portion of the money made going to the oley food bank. in the past, the food bank has supported about 40 families, prout says. but with the strained economy still taking its toll at the local level, the last she heard, the food bank was supporting 70 families in the oley valley.

    

two bands, the manatawny creek ramblers and vuja de, will spin up some musical delights at the festival, while free pony rides—normally a charged for and expensive, short-lived offering—will be available for the little ones.

    

studio b’s artmobile and clayote’s pottery-making are likely to also be a part of the mix during the festival.

     

hayrides, face painting, and strawberry shortcake will complement the fun of the day as well.

     

prout says last year, around 31 days of producing strawberries marked the early summer weeks. this involved around 5,000 quarts in sum, as a conservative estimate, prout says.

     

but with a profession almost fully dependent on the whimsical and sometimes unkind ways of seasonal temperatures and precipitation, the availability of strawberries is as they say, up in the air. with this in mind, prout is hoping the seed-speckled red ones will be ready in plentiful numbers for the festival goers.

“i really like the party aspect of it,” prout says, as she basically plans the event all on her own.

     

the educational angle allows prout to take those who attend through her fields of produce, demonstrating how the most nutrients and flavor are tucked into field-raised food best when they are freshly  grabbed, ripe; fruits and veggies have the most abundant nutritional value when they are ripe on the plant. the minute they're picked, they slowly begin losing nutrients.

    

prout enjoys teaching her customers the best smarts with healthy eating one intelligence at a time, and the festival each summer is a great opportunity for children to visit a farm setting while they and their parents learn more about food and its origins and better benefits for the body.

     

to test out some strawberry-picking and the likes of a kid-friendly outing, visit prout’s jollyview farm during its festival or farm stand hours.

     

also search for prout’s jollyview farm on facebook.