A&H Farm held its Strawberry Festival with unique foods

MANHATTAN, Kan. (WIBW) - A&H Farm held its 4th Strawberry Festival today in Manhattan. The theme at the farm Saturday was all strawberry.

“We have you pick strawberries that we normally do in our field but we’ve been picked out. We have strawberry theme everything so we have strawberry lemonade slushies, we have fresh squeezed strawberry lemonade, we do a strawberry grilled cheese, strawberry capri salads, strawberry butter, strawberry donuts, strawberry everything,” said Andrea DeJesus, owner of A&H Farm.

Members of the community got to enjoy free samples of things inside while also enjoying the nice day outside on the farm with the animals and games. DeJesus said the neat thing about the festival is trying different things with strawberries.

“We have been having festivals for over 12 years now and expanded to add more themes and the gourmet food that’s a big addition just simple things like the Capri salad, normally it’s with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella but now we switched it out and with have it with strawberries so super unique foods that you can come out and get during the month of May,” said DeJesus.

There were not a lot of strawberries to pick as the farm picked some and with the weather not being consistent there wasn’t much to start with.

“When it’s 90 degrees they ripen a lot faster so that plays a part but it’s not just what happens this week it’s what happened a month ago, so we had rainy weather a month ago and 30 days from bloom to berry so when it’s rainy the bees don’t come out and pollinate, the flowers don’t get pollinated, the strawberries don’t grow so that also contributes to not having quite enough strawberries,” said DeJesus.

DeJesus said it’s great having the community out to enjoy this but also educate them a little on strawberries.

“It’s great to have the community out, they can get to touch the agriculture. We do allow people out to the strawberry field so they can see how they grow, they can touch and feel them but they can see how much we turn them into different things, different foods that are unique and it also gives us a chance to educate that strawberries don’t grow year-round around here they are constrained the weather plays a role on how they grow, how fast they grow, how ripe they get, and it gives us a chance to educate the consumer on those types of things,” said DeJesus.

The Strawberry Festival will continue tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at A&H Farm which is located at 1374 Collins Lane in Manhattan.