Celebrating Those Summertime Blues

Reader Contribution by Cindy Murphy
Published on August 20, 2008
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I live in the area known as Michigan’s Fruit Belt. Orchards and vineyards make up a large part of the countryside, and the small towns throughout celebrate the bounty these crops bring by honoring the various fruits with a myriad of festivals – any reason to throw a party for family, friends, and neighbors is a good one when you live in a small town.

The fruit festival season kicks off early with the Blossomtime Festival in spring; festivals heralding specific fruits follow when the blossoms fall, the fruit forms, and ripens throughout summer. The opening of strawberry season is commemorated with its traditional auction of the first crate of ripe strawberries. It’s for bragging rights mostly – for both the grower, and the winner. This year’s first case sold for a record $15,200.00. Yep, that many zeros for a crate of strawberries! All the money goes to a charity of the highest bidder’s choosing. After strawberry season concludes, comes the International Cherry Pit and Spit Competition, and then the Peach Festival; the ‘Red Haven’ peach was developed right here in South Haven. The Apple Festival, the Wine and Harvest Festival, and the many all-encompassing, whatever-is-left harvest fests, round out the fruit festival season.

Here, in South Haven, blueberry is king, and our contribution to the fruit festival line-up is the National Blueberry Festival – or just “Blueberry Fest,” if you’re a local. South Haven is the Blueberry Capitol of the World, and though the title is a self-proclamation, it might not be too far off the mark. Michigan leads the nation in blueberry production, with much of the fruit coming from this immediate area.

If you happen to miss the blueberry fields on the outskirts of town, our reverence for this fruit is apparent throughout the year once you hit downtown proper. The first thing you’ll see are these tiny, but plump, sweet little morsels of healthful goodness represented in basketball-sized form, nestled amongst other fruit and vegetables on a mural celebrating our agricultural heritage.

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