Memorial Day weekend signals the start of summer and brings waves of tourists to the beaches.
In Virginia Beach, a patchwork of people are keeping another local Memorial Day weekend tradition alive — celebrating strawberries.
The Pungo Strawberry Festival was held for more than 30 years until 2019 and didn’t return after it was cancelled during the pandemic. A handful of fests have sprouted up, but without much involvement from the farmers who grow the fruit.
Last weekend’s Strawberry Festival at the Beach featured strawberry-shaped sunglasses at a photo booth and strawberry cold foam lattes, but a dearth of local strawberries.
Barbara Henley, a city councilperson who owns a farm and grows strawberries, said farmers were not involved.
The end of May is no longer the prime season for local strawberry production.
“When you plan something like a festival, if you’re trying to do it for a crop like strawberries, and you want strawberries locally, you’ve got to do a lot of planning dependent on the crop,” she said.
This year’s strawberries grew earlier in mid-April and later blooming varieties were not as plentiful, Henley said. She attributed the earlier peak of strawberry season to climate change.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, warmer winters and springs in Virginia have an impact on agriculture, leading to longer growing seasons.
Mike Cullipher, who owns Cullipher Farms, said his crop ripened earlier, too. The Oceanfront festival organizers approached him to participate but he declined, saying he didn’t have enough people to transport the fruit and manage a booth.
Cullipher sells almost everything on the farm at his market on Princess Anne Road in the Back Bay area of Virginia Beach. His father spent years cultivating this business model, which he continued and expanded with a larger market and produce that visitors can pick all summer long.
Neither Henley nor Cullipher is participating in the festival this weekend at Back Bay Brew House Farmhouse, which will feature live music and a strawberry shortcake cider.
Strawberries have always been cultivated in what is now Virginia Beach, Cullipher said.
Long before English settlers arrived, Indigenous people grew them. The Potawatomi called them heart berries, after a story that they sprang from the creator’s heart.
Cullipher told a story about colonists arriving in Virginia: As they sailed up to Jamestown in 1607, they saw the plants growing in Native people’s gardens at what is now called First Landing. They didn’t know what they were, but called them strawberries for the straw lining the soil at the plants’ base.
They’re among the earliest plants that bear fruit. A wild variety that grows across North America is named for Virginia, the Fragaria virginiana. It’s one of two species hybridized to create the modern strawberry people are most familiar with in gardens and grocery stores.
The plant is so central to Virginia Beach’s identity that its distinctive scalloped leaves appear in the city seal.
Oceanfront denizens developed the strawberry fest this year to showcase businesses in the Artery District, a strip of shops, restaurants and galleries along Laskin Road.
Tricia Abernathy, a festival organizer, said it was a way to bring the community together at the beach before tourist season kicked off.
She began signing up vendors in March, but it was too late to get farmers on board.
"We tried everything to make it so that they were part of the equation,” she said. “But this first year, we just did not have our ducks in a row."
Abernathy hopes farms will be more involved next year.
Strawberry-flavored Jody’s popcorn, made in Norfolk, enticed visitors toward Jonathan Langman’s gallery CoastalMod on Saturday. Inside, artist Kessy Heath sold breezy color-washed paintings.
“The festival is about connection and community,” Heath said. “That’s what it was for so many years down in Pungo, but having it here allows different folks to get involved.”
Abernathy was in the fields at Vaughan Farms Produce, picking strawberries the days before the festival. Organizers gave them away on bamboo skewers at the fest, but they ran out by noon.
