From 1989: “BERRIES! Not to mention the ice cream. Young Alexander Jerison celebrated the coming of summertime the way many Yellow Springs folks do it each year.” First Presbyterian Church’s annual Strawberry Fest returns for its 72nd anniversary Friday, June 13, 6–9 p.m. (Yellow Springs News archive photo)
Strawberry Fest — A long, strong community tradition
- Published: June 12, 2025
As it heads into its 72nd anniversary, First Presbyterian Church’s annual Strawberry Fest remains one of the longest-running community events in the village. Every summer for more than seven decades, folks have come out to enjoy strawberries, cake, ice cream and community with their neighbors.
The Strawberry Fest returns Friday, June 13, 6–9 p.m., on the church grounds. As always, the festival will feature fresh strawberries, ice cream from Young’s Dairy and homemade cakes. Music and entertainment will be provided by the YS Community Band and Egyptian Breeze belly dancing troupe.
First Presbyterian Church members and Strawberry Fest organizers Jim Felder, Hilary Smith, Theresa Mayer, Carol Speakman, Libby Rudolf and the Rev. Daria Schaffnit spoke with the News following the church’s Sunday service this week about the event’s long history. They said the festival — and its fall counterpart, Apple Fest — are communitywide events, the attendees of which have traditionally spanned beyond the church membership.
“This church has brought many, many people for [Strawberry Fest],” Felder said. “And since it’s right on the front street and it happens every year, we’ve got people who want to help, and that’s the truth.”
The annual Strawberry Fest is slated for Friday, June 13, 6–9 p.m., on the front lawn of the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Yellow Springs. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
Volunteers in strawberry-cutting and cake-baking, too, have often come from the wider community. To that end, a strawberry cutting bee and cake collection will be held Friday morning, June 13, 9 a.m.–noon.; all in the community are welcome to take part in the cutting bee and/or donate cakes to the event. Students in need of community service hours, in particular, are encouraged to donate their time.
“It’s just fun to sit and chat while you’re cutting strawberries,” Mayer said. “That’s why we call it a cutting bee — like a quilting bee — because it’s a social time.”
The Strawberry Fest has always served as a fundraiser for the church, which was built in 1859. Currently, the church is in need of repairs to its boiler, which stopped working this winter, as well as its organ. Roof repairs are needed, too; as the News reported last year, the church raised funds to evict a colony of bats from its sanctuary, but cracks in the church’s nearly two-century-old roof have allowed some bats to find their way back in.
Thanks to a grant from the YS Community Foundation, the Presbyterian Church is working to upgrade its kitchen, which is used by a number of community groups.
In a town with history like Yellow Springs’, everything old, eventually, becomes new again: Funds from the very first Strawberry Fest, held Saturday, June 13, 1953, were being raised to “modernize” the church’s kitchen.
That year, the event was publicized in the News as a “Strawberry Social and Rummage Sale,” organized by the church’s Presby-Weds, a group of young married couples. Updating the church’s kitchen, the News write-up stated, was being undertaken by the church’s Women’s Association. As in the years that would follow, ice cream, strawberries and homemade cakes were served.
Strawberry social events continued until, by 1957, the event was officially hailed as the “Annual Strawberry Fest” in the pages of the News. That year, organizers were: “Lloyd Kennedy, in charge of getting strawberries; Dr. and Mrs. Howard Smith, procuring of other supplies; George Kakehashi, publicity; Mrs. Kieth A. Howard, preparing strawberries; Kenneth Coffman, lights; William Warren, table and chair set-up; Mrs. Rollin Brewer, in charge of servers; William Callas, clean-up; Mrs. Eugene Diehl, cakes; Mrs. Robert Van Lehn, coffee and drinks; Mrs. E. J. Dykstra, cashiers.”
Strawberry Fest, 2024 (Photo by Truth Garrett)
Jim and Betty Felder — whom the News has hailed in past reporting as “chairman and co-chairman of the Strawberry Festival for more years than they can remember” — came to the village in 1962, and joined the church soon after. Initially, Jim Felder said, the event was primarily run by the church’s women, but men were increasingly becoming part of the event planning by the time the Felders came on board.
The event’s current organizers remembered the names of many others who helped bring the festival to fruition over the years, including Lloyd Kennedy, Walter Rhodes, JoAnn and Ed Wallace and Ruth Bent.
“Ruth used to make a serious list and call everyone on that list and tell them, ‘You have to bring two cakes,’” Mayer recalled with a laugh.
And Jim Felder confirmed that Lloyd Kennedy, as stated in the News item quoted above, was often responsible for sourcing the festival’s strawberries from a wholesaler in Dayton — though he recalled an event that led to a shift several decades ago: “The day before the festival, I called Mrs. So and So, and she said, ‘Oh, somebody needed the strawberries, and I sold it to them!’”
Felder said organizers scrambled to find replacement strawberries at the last minute. Ultimately, it was Jackson’s Farm Market in Xenia that saved the festival that year, and continued to supply strawberries to the festival for years after. Now, the church purchases its strawberries from Tom’s Market in Yellow Springs.
“We get organic strawberries from Tom’s — it’s good for us, it’s good for the earth, and they deliver!” Libby Rudolf said.
By the 1980s, the organizers said, Felder had the idea to expand the Strawberry Fest from Friday night into Saturdays during Street Fair, which itself by then had expanded from its beginnings as a sidewalk sale in 1970.
“I would always come down [to Street Fair] and get some of those Vietnamese egg rolls when I was a teenager, and then I’d come over here and get strawberries,” the Rev. Schaffnit said.
In 1981, Young’s Jersey Dairy began making and selling its own ice cream, which became a staple of Strawberry Fest offerings. After the founding of the YS Community Band in 1993, band performances were added to the schedule.
When Street Fair was put on hold for all of 2020 and 2021 and half of 2022 due to the pandemic, the Strawberry Fest was confined to Friday night only, and is no longer held during Street Fair events. However, the changes wrought by the pandemic brought an expansion to the festival’s annual line-up of entertainment.
“When things started opening up after COVID, there was no Street Fair, and [the Egyptian Breeze belly dancers] approached us and said, ‘Hey, can we dance at Strawberry Festival?’” Schaffnit said. “We said, ‘Sure!’”
Strawberry Fest, 2024 (Photo by Truth Garrett)
She added: “I’ve heard comments like, ‘This is a church and they have belly dancers?’ Yep, and I teach about ‘Black Panther,’ too!”
Outside of hosting its own community events, First Presbyterian Church has long been a gathering space for a variety of village groups, including the Beloved Community Project’s monthly free community meals; Chamber Music in Yellow Springs’ series of concerts; tai chi classes; youth group meetings; and community theater performances.
Schaffnit said opening the church to other groups as a way of community-building remains one of the church’s focal ministries.
“I think community-building is the best kind of ministry,” she said.
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