TERRE HAUTE —
Nothing says summer like a big bowl of strawberry shortcake. Especially today, in downtown Terre Haute.
For 24 years, the First Congregational Church has been serving up doses of summer in the form of biscuits topped with strawberries, ice cream and whipped cream. The church’s annual Strawberry Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. today at Sixth and Ohio streets.
A downtown tradition, the festival “sorta is that thing that kicks off the summer,” said the Rev. Dawn Carlson. It takes about 150 volunteers to run the festival and “they come from all over … It’s really a community effort,” she said.
“The kitchen crew starts at 7:30 in the morning, putting [strawberry dishes] into freezers,” she said. If there’s no time to enjoy a sweet treat at the festival, people can call in orders at (812) 232-8880 until 2 p.m. Sometimes a business owner will come and pick up as many as 100 orders, Carlson said.
“We order our strawberries ready-to-go. Because we do so many servings, it would take a year” to prepare the fruit, she said. “The women of the church [use to make] the biscuits. We ordered 10,000 biscuits [this year]. It’s a lot.”
Started by the women’s church group, the Mayflower Guild, the festival was “very much patterned after the strawberry festival they do in Indianapolis,” Carlson said.
The power of Terre Haute’s community spirit shows through when numbers are taken into consideration: The goal is to sell 10,000 servings. And on average, they’ve done just that in recent years. Carlson has been told the Indy festival sells roughly 13,000 servings a year.
“We always worry about the weather and somehow it always works out,” Carlson said, explaining there’s a little superstition involved in the form of a hat. “The hat is 24 years old too, but we always laugh about the hat. It’s been passed down from minister to minister. We claim it’s a combo of the hat and the [weather],” that makes the festival a success. “You kinda wear it with pride,” she said.
At one time the Vigo County Historical Society had asked if they could have it, but were told “we can’t do [the festival] without ‘the hat,’” Carlson said.
On top of tradition and superstition, success may also be due to prices, which haven’t changed in 10 years, according to Carlson.
“We’re very conscious of not raising our prices, because it’s a community thing. We have kids who come, and all they’ve got is a dollar and we want them to participate,” she said.
The festival accepts cash, checks and business cards.
Get what festival organizers call “The Works” for $5. “The Works” includes everything: biscuit, berries, ice cream and whipped topping.
Ice cream is $1, with any other combination costing between $1 and $5.
The annual festival “supports a variety of things,” Carlson said. “We believe that our church is a place of hope and healing, and it allows us to make the church available to groups. Meals on Wheels are housed at our church, anonymous groups,” and other community organizations, she said.
“To be able to make that space available is very important to us. It’s in the spirit of a true Congregational church, which in many communities was the meeting house. A lot of churches back East still call their building the meeting house.”
Alicia Morgan can be reached at (812) 231-4298 or alicia.morgan@tribstar.com.
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