10% blackberry

Oct 1

Still not over the bathtub races

Here’s the script from this episode

Recently someone said to me, There’s not enough blackberry at the blackberry festival! We have to get back to the roots of blackberry festival! I gave it a half frustrated giggle- pleased by the pun and displeased by the reminder of the roots springing back up in my front yard.

And then I started to wonder, because… I don’t actually know the roots of the blackberry festival.

so, I did some digging. heehee.

I guess I had this pre-conceived notion about it. Like it was some old timey fruit festival that’s older than the town. That grannys must have been entering blackberry cobblers into baking contests in the blackberry festival before I was born. But that’s not true at all! The blackberry festival is comparatively young. Younger than me! Younger than my baby sister. Maybe even younger than you.

let’s start with the blackberries themselves. The blackberry festival can’t be that old because, well, the blackberries that run rampant in this region aren’t native plants. They’re an invasive species, called the Himalayan Blackberry and it was only introduced to america in 1894. A man who was passionate about fresh food and keen on breeding plants got ahold of some blackberry seeds from a dealer overseas and started selling them in his seed catalog. People bought them and started planting them in their gardens. And the rest is history. We did have native blackberries but they weren’t as large or sweet or juicy as the himalayan blackberry. If you go outside and look, you might be able to spot some native blackberry plants. Their vines are smaller and slimmer, almost pastel colored in comparison to the himalayan. They tend to snake along the ground, and their berries are small. No one thought they were worth having a festival over.

Okay, so, If we didn’t always have a blackberry festival, what did we have? I poked around and found lots of fruit festivals are common all over the united states but that before we cared about blackberries, Washington actually loved strawberries. There’s four nearby strawberry festivals to this day- bellevue, marysville, bainbridge and vashon island. Strawberry festivals would be held in bremerton by social clubs or schools as a way to drum up money. And I bet those strawberry festivals were something spectacular because it turns out, the local variety of Strawberry was itself something special and spectacular.

It turns out, there used to strawberry farms all over, especially poulsbo and bainbridge island. They grew the marshall strawberry, a member of the fragaria family. These were family farms, usually japanese or filipino farmers. At it’s peak, there were 575 acres of strawberry farms. The Marshall strawberry was famed worldwide for being the sweetest strawberry in existence. Because they had the highest sugar content for a strawberry they have a short shelf life, and folks came from all over to sample them. Even the queen of england demanded marshall strawberries from bainbridge island when she paid a visit to canada in 1939.

But… I’ve never heard of the Marshall strawberry. So, What happened?

Well. A combination of capitalism, war and racism.

During WW2, Bainbridge Island was not only in close proximity to navy yard in Bremerton, but also home to Fort Ward, a communications station that included gun batteries. In March of 1942, following the bombing of pearl harbor, the internment of innocent japanese americans began on the west coast and it included bainbridge island. The japanese-american strawberry farmers who were lovingly caring for the marshall strawberries were rounded up and relocated to Manzanar Relocation Center in California. In their absence, the filipino and native american farmhands stepped in to care for the berries when they could- but able bodied men and women were needed to work in factories and support the war effort.

Because of this, many acres of strawberry fields went fallow. The Marshalls were a delicate plant to begin with, often suffering from rain and rot, and prone to something called the Strawberry Crinkle Virus. SCV reduces plant rigidity, runner production, fruit size, and production, while causing distortion and crinkling of the leaves. SCV leaves the plants vulnerable to other dangerous conditions. The Marshall plants slowly stopped producing fruit.

The bainbridge island history museum reports that after WW2 berry production recovered to pre-war levels but farmers began phasing the marshalls out in favor of more commercially viable plants. The high sugar content and short shelf life meant the Marshalls couldn’t be shipped, severely limiting the potential profits of the farmers. By 1961, the Marshall strawberry was gone. The marshall strawberry is currently at risk of complete extinction. There is one clone of the plant in a USDA repository in oregon and only handful of heirloom farmers, who grow them as a delicacy or a hobby, including the BI history museum.

As this gentle and delicate strawberry was dying, another more invasive plant was rising. Harder to kill, running wild with nothing in the local ecosystem to stop it, the Himalayan blackberry rose to power.

the blackberry festival comes into existence during a dark time for downtown bremerton. When the Kitsap Mall opened in 1985, Silverdale became the shopping hub for the region. The department stores that had once occupied those large buildings in downtown bremerton moved to the mall. The remaining shops slowly withered. Most of them closed. If something opened, it was a bar. Buildings were abandoned. Drugs were omnipresent. You only went downtown if you needed to catch a ferry.

The Downtown Bremerton Association wanted to change that. Advertisements start showing up in the sun newspaper, seeking ethnic food vendors for a new festival. That struck me as weird at first. “ethnic food vendors”. comes across as old fashioned and maybe a little racist? but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The blackberry festival rises from the ashes of the marshall strawberry. The strawberry farms on BI were full of native americans, filipinos and japanese americans. The strawberry festival had been a combination of these cultures and the strawberries. The blackberry festival would follow in the footsteps of the strawberry festivals before it.

The first blackberry festival is only one day long, in 1990 but it brought 5000 people downtown. From there, the festival only grew. The second blackberry festival advertised 8 hrs of live music performed on two stages, a car show, children’s entertainment and a blackberry bake-off. They’ve got some kind of partnership with the Bremerton Airfield. And the 25th annual bathtub races?! Wtf is the bathrub races hold on. Hold the presses. I need to look this up.

Okay there’s a wiki about them. Bathtub racing is a competition that involves the use of bathtub boats, small powered watercraft designed around bathtubs or close facsimiles.

Oh. oh my god. They’re sailing them. They’re strapping motors to bathtubs and sailing them! Oh these pictures are wild. I always think Bremerton can not surprise me anymore and then bam, it turns out we spearheaded an international friendship bathtub race with canada?! They literally launched bathtubs as boats from the lions field dock and had to sail them to the downtown marina. This is… wild.

Okay, okay, back to the blackberry festival. 25,000 people attended the second year, so The third year, the blackberry festival added a second day and the bathtub races are back. Blackberry picking contest, pie eating contest, bake off and beer garden. Now, this is sounding what I expect a fruit festival to be! Oh, ok, festival organizers warn that if you want blackberry products to come early because they sell out fast.

That’s one of the complaints I hear nowadays. Not enough blackberry at the blackberry festival. But 1993 has all kind of stuff, has it just not survived to the modern day? I’m gonna run down this list of notable highlights.

1992… does that say helicopter rides? what.

The last mention I see of a bake off is in 1994.

1996 clown troupe from USS abraham lincoln

Oh, here we go. There’s a sun article from 97 with a complaint that there’s not enough blackberries at the festival. Hah. so, complaining about the perceived lack of blackberries is almost as old as the festival itself. A time honored tradition.

Someone got married at the Blackberry Festival 1998. I feel like that’s how you know you’ve made it as a festival, when folks want to get married there.

They celebrated 10 year anniversary in 1999 with the first batch of blackberry wine and commemorative stamps.

Ooh, in 2001 they had crepes. I bet blackberry crepes are delicious.

Oh, okay. So they used to sell pies but it looks like they lost their baker in 2006. That same year they expanded to a 3-day festival.

I’ve got personal history with 2007. I know there was henna that year because I got a henna tramp stamp that I loved so much, I marched into a local tattoo shop and had it made permanent. What a decision that was. oh, look, 2016 had pies. it looks like they were made by the high school. Hm. It’s sort of all over the place, isn’t it.

You know, I went to the blackberry festival this year. I didn’t feel like I was surrounded by blackberry stuff but I know that we saw wine and seasonings and lemonade. I know I saw the booth for the blackberry slugs. Oh, if you’ve never had them the slugs are like little blackberry filled donuts with powdered sugar on top. I wonder what the blackberry festival itself has to say about the amount of blackberry.

The website for 2023 says they have 150 vendors total. It looks like all food vendors are required to serve a blackberry item and it can’t just be lemonade… They advertise 15+ food vendors. I mean, that math is pretty simple right? 15 food vendors divided by 150 total vendors means the blackberry festival is roughly 10% blackberry. Give or take, for the packaged products like wine or the cute little earrings I bought.

Hm. It doesn’t seem wrong. the 10% estimate. but who am I to throw stones… or, throw blackberries? The festival has grown and changed hands over the years. It looks like it’s run by the Bremerton Rotary Club nowadays, which is a service organization that does a lot of charity projects and community involvement. I mean, you can’t be mad at a charity for doing their best. It takes a lot of work to put on a festival.

What do you think, Bremelorians? Did you sample some blackberry delicacies at the festival this year? Do you think there’s enough blackberry at the festival? Have you ever been part of the bake off or pie eating contest or raced through the port washington narrows in a bathtub?! I can not get over this bathtub racing thing.

Sources

https://aroundthetablefarm.com/2015/04/27/strawberries-are-close-to-the-heart-of-the-matter/

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1998/06-18/0053_strawberries__u_don_t_pick.html

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/2005/06-08/51351_the_marshall_plan.html

92 helicopter rides?!

93 chaplains and health facts

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1993/09-01/285755_blackberry_blessing.html

baking contest in 94

https://products.kitsapsun.com/archive/1994/09-07/299223_blackberry_fest__port_orchard_m.html

Last mention

95 ethnic food

pies in 96