MONROE, CT — Despite the periodic rain, residents, some with umbrellas, came out to Monroe Congregational Church’s Strawberry Festival Saturday, buying bags of sweet and salty kettle corn and items from vendors on the green, listening to live country music on the church grounds, and ordering hamburgers and hotdogs hot off the grill.
“Even with the drizzle, people are still coming out,” said The Rev. Jennifer Gingras, senior pastor of Monroe Congregational Church (MCC), “and the lines are moving because we have a new process of ordering strawberry shortcakes, smoothies and strawberry boba lemonade.”
Another new wrinkle in this year’s festival are golf cart rides for elderly patrons and people with mobility issues, taking them from the parking area on Fireman’s Field to the middle of the festival.
The Strawberry Festival continues today (Sunday) from noon to 5 p.m.
The new process for ordering strawberry shortcakes, smoothies and strawberry boba lemonade starts at a table manned by volunteers, Melissa Coleman, who handled the financial transactions, and Jim Hisey, who typed the orders into an iPad.
Not long after customers walk to a second table, just outside the Rexford House, Gingras said the food was often waiting for them. Emily Laughlin, 12, worked at that table late Saturday morning.
A few feet past her, volunteers Sue Waters, Mark Barnhart and Bill Allen used a blender, strawberries and bananas to make strawberry smoothies. Smoothies were sold right there, but the strawberry shortcakes were brought out with the new ordering system.
“Today’s National Shortcake Day,” Waters said.
Inside the Rexford House is where the assembly took place. Kristina Logan oversaw other volunteers’ work.
“The order on the iPad shows up here. We prepare it here and our runners take it outside and yell the number or the name,” Logan said of the middle school age volunteers. “The kids miss taking the orders and coming to us, but it used to be done all day and they were tired by the end of it. It got hard.”
Logan said kids, who are better with technology, also handled the iPad inside the Rexford House.
Long tables were assembled in a row, where eight volunteers sliced the tops off strawberries and placed them in large bowls. When they finished a bowl, it was brought into the kitchen, where Ann Zeiner worked with other volunteers.
“We slice them and they keep the good ones whole for the pies,” she said.
Working in the open area outside the kitchen, Stacy Andrejczyk dipped strawberries into crockpots of melted dark and milk chocolate.
In separate room, Leanne McEvoy packaged all of the dipped strawberries and stacked it in rows on a table. Some containers were all dark chocolate, some were all milk chocolate and others were half-and-half.
“We used to do white chocolate too, but it’s harder to melt,” McEvoy explained. “People will eat them here and some will take it home.”
She said one man bought five pies at a quarter-to-10 that morning. The pies are on display in another room, which also has bowls of baked biscuits for the strawberry shortcakes.
At an assembly line in the open room of the Rexford House, a volunteer cut a biscuit in half on a paper plate, before a scoop of vanilla ice cream, strawberry topping and whipped cream were added further down the line.
Volunteer Spotlight
The roughly 200 volunteers, who make the Monroe Congregational Church’s Strawberry Festival a success every year vary in age. Among them, Christian Lewis, 11, of Meriden, who is The Gingras’ cousin, supervised the bounce house.
“This is my second year volunteering,” he said, adding of the first one, “I did the bounce house and it was new to me to handle cash transactions.”
Parents lining up at Lewis’ table gave him two dollars per ticket, allowing their children entry into the bounce house behind him.
Lewis also enforces the rules, such as a restriction to five minutes per session and no “rough housing,” somersaults, flips or horseplay that could get someone hurt.
“Last year, some said that I didn’t give them five minutes when I did,” Lewis recalled. “They eventually listen.”
Sometimes he has to bring in reinforcements.
“Today, there was a child refusing to get out,” Lewis said. Of making the child leave the bounce house, he added, “that’s not up to me. It’s up to their parents. I tell them.”
“I love volunteering and being able to work with money, because I want to be a barista when I’m older,” he said.
Gingras praised Lewis for the job he has been doing.
“Christian almost single-handedly handles the bounce house and he’s good at keeping the kids safe and keeping the parents informed of the rules of the bounce house,” she said. “He has to be really patient with kids younger than himself. He’s been here all week getting us ready for the festival, doing a lot of jobs.”
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