electric mist

strawberry festival

Oops, that "pictures will be up in a few minutes" turned into a day.

Every year in April, a tiny little town east of Baton Rouge hosts the Louisiana Strawberry Festival. Now, Louisiana will have a festival at the drop of a hat. In fact, I think there is a hat-dropping festival somewhere. Give us any excuse to party, to goof off, to drink? We are there. The little town of Ponchatoula revived itself a decade or so ago by creating an "antique" district -- where turn-of-the-century buildings on the main street have everything you may want. (An aside -- here's my collection of antique French drip enamel coffee pots... some are from family, but many were found in Ponchatoula. And that antique washing machine was also a find there.)

What Ponchatoula and nearby Hammond (a larger city) are well-known for are their gorgeous strawberries:

Biting into one of these is heaven, pure and juicy. Our grocery stores import California strawberries during the off season, but there just isn't anything like home-grown. My grandfather used to be one of the strawberry growers, and some of my happiest memories are going out to his farm, picking strawberries and eating them sliced (with a sprinkle of sugar) until my hands were stained red and I could barely move from the satisfaction. My mom would bring home several flats and spend an evening stemming, slicing and then freezing them so we would have them year 'round. Whenever I would get sick, I'd eat the frozen strawberries straight -- still frozen, like a popsicle and it would always make me feel better.

I had forgotten how incredibly crowded festivals can be -- everywhere you looked, people. Hundreds of thousands according to the official website, which I would have said was a complete exaggeration, had I not been there. (See the photos on that link above for some of the crowd scenes.) I think the thing which surprised me most were the hundreds of Harley motorcycles. I don't know if it was some huge club which traveled together or just a gorgeous day for a ride, but there was a veritable sea of motorcycles near downtown. I forgot to grab the camera for that sight, but this one cracked me up -- this guy had obviously already had enough, and we were only half-way through the day:

We mostly went to hear our oldest son, Luke, play (drums). He has a three-man band / group, which was short one man (the singer) who, for reasons no one is really clear on, never came home from a date the night before, even though he was the guy who set up the gig. The guitar player had dragged himself in at six that morning, and was still a little buzzed by noon when they were playing, but even with two strikes against them, they acquitted themselves nicely and the crowd seemed to enjoy them -- many people stopped to listen and cheer.

and

We had a lot of fun and on the way home, stopped by a couple of places to pick up more plants for the front yard... so I'll be planting soon.

Posted by toni at April 5, 2004 11:45 AM