Over 600 people attended the first Mad River Valley Strawberry Festival at multiple venues around The Valley on June 18 and 19.
The festival featured pick-your-own strawberries, strawberry-themed food at multiple venues, a recipe contest, hat parade and window decorating contest.
The hub of the festival was Hartshorn’s farm stand in Waitsfield where strawberry milkshakes, cotton candy, flatbread, switchel and shortcake were available along with live music by Liv Del Brocco, strawberry picking, massage and children’s activities.
Winners of the recipe competition were announced on Sunday, after the judges had sampled the entries. In the professional category the winners were as follows:
Professional
1. Trevor Chikaura, The Pitcher Inn.
2. Kitty Coyne, The Warren Store.
3. Denise Corbeil, Three Mountain Café.
4. Allen Zeiner, White Horse Inn.
5. Aron Kielich, American Flatbread.
6. Jon Walluck, Waitsfield Inn.
Nonprofessional
1. Quayl Rewinski.
2. Kim Donahue.
3. Patricia Floyd.
4. Virginia Scarpato.
5. Martin Veit.
6. Suzie Ricketts.
“Thank you to everyone who participated. Also, thanks for all the patience during our first bake-off. We learned a few things and will hopefully fix those before the blueberry bake-off. One of the things we realized is that we should at least name the top three in each category. I'm going to go for the top six. We had 24 items total with a couple of no-shows,” said Julie Burns of Three Mountain Café, one of the organizers of the event.
