Popular family event in Orange going ‘full strawberry’

ORANGE — After a year off in 2020 because of the pandemic and a scaled-down version in 2021, the popular Strawberry Festival will be going “full strawberry” this year, said co-chairman Stuart King.

The festival, a fundraiser for Orange Congregational Church, has gradually become one of the town’s premier warm weather events, attracting folks from around the region.

“It’s a process and we’re getting back to it,” King said.

The festival will be held June 11 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with a rain date of June 12 at High Plains Community Center, 525 Orange Center Road.

Church member and longtime Strawberry Festival committee member Susan Cassidy said she believes the event is popular because “it’s a nice day out with the family,” for a low cost, as there is no general admission.

“I think it’s the small-town, old-fashioned feel of it,” that makes the event a winner, Cassidy said. “This time it’s going to be really nice to get out as a community and come back together.”

Last year, the church held what King describes as a “mini-festival.”

There was strawberry shortcake, a modified food menu and some vendors, but there was no sale of the popular homemade strawberry and strawberry rhubarb pies, no jams and no “red car” show.

This year the pies, jams and red car show are back, and they are bringing back the commemorative slushy cups to celebrate the town’s bicentennial.

The pies — about 350 of them — are made from scratch by church members Thursday through the Saturday of the fair in the High Plains Community Center kitchen, and they usually sell out.

“We can’t make enough pies fast enough,” King said.

In addition to the pies, the church will return to selling jams in flavors that include strawberry, strawberry rhubarb, berries and cherries, and jalapeno jumble berry. They’ll have at least 450 jars for sale, they said.

Contributed photo Stuart King