The Blueberry Festival in Greenville South Carolina is a wonderful family activity.  This event is hosted at the Roper Mountain Science Center on the second Saturday in July.



Instead of taking the bus after parking the car, we opted for the long hike!  Good for us you know, to get out and walk.  We live an hour’s drive away so it felt good to walk after riding in the car for the past hour.  But they do offer a shuttle service if you want to use it.  This is a huge campus to walk, check out this map and you will see what I mean.




Venders

During the festival, venders were available on site selling fresh blueberries, blueberry plants, and various blueberry theamed items. There were also lots of learning opportunities for the kids to learn more about blueberries, science, and history in the various science buildings and outside in the Living History Farm.  More about these adventures will be posted in part 2.



All of the blueberry plants for sale were loaded with sweet juicy berries.  I love to show the children the plants that produce our food.  This was a good opportunity to see the plants up close.  I only wish I had an unlimited supply of funds to buy lots of these wonderful plants and bring them home and plant them in our yard!  Plants that provide nourishing food year after year in your own yard is a win win situation!

At the festival we met lots of venders with fresh picked blueberries for sale.  Some of these venders we have met in previous years at the festival and some were new this year.   You could find ripe juicy blueberries for sale by the pint basket, half gallon basket, and gallon bucket.

Gentry Farms had huge gallon buckets for sale of fresh berries. 



Marvelous Pies had fresh baked and unbaked pies for sale.  We bought one last year and it was delicious.  We were really hoping she would be here again this year.  Sure enough, she was here with lots of marvelous blueberry pies! 

 

Several venders offer free samples of blueberries and various products made with blueberries.  My children were happy to assist in sampling the blueberries!



Happy Berry Farms had fresh blueberries and several flavors of jams on hand.

 

One of our favorite bakeries was here again this year.  Great Harvest Bakery seems to have just about anything your hearts desires when it comes to baked goods.  They are so fresh and delicious. 

 

Last year we had purchased blueberry lemon bread and we were hoping they would be here again with this vender would be here again with their delicious breads.  Yes indeed!  They had way too many breads, muffins, scones, and deserts to choose from.

  

Check out this video about Great Harvest Bakery in Greenville South Carolina.



You can pick anything you want to sample, and believe me, a sample is a huge slice of heaven on earth!  They are not stingy when it comes to samples.  And you are welcome to have more than one.  We tried cinnamon breakfast bread with butter and with blueberry jam!  Oooh it is so good!

 

Blueberry swirl bread, spread with more blueberry jam was delicious too.

 

Whole Foods also had a delicious cooking workshop, and fresh locally grown South Carolina organic blueberries and homemade blueberry sausage balls and South Carolina grown maple syrup for dipping.  YUM!

   

There were more venders selling ice cream, homemade soaps, lotions, fresh honey, and various other items.  They also host venders selling fresh locally raised organic and grass fed meats too.  


Music

Bluegrass music played through out the festival.  
 



Living History Farm

We love visiting the farm at RMSC.  It is alive with characters in costumes re-enacting life from the past.  Most of the farm portrays what life was like in the 1800’s.



We enjoyed walking into each of the historic log cabins and learning how people lived 200 years or so ago, what toys they played with, how they ate, cooked, hunted, gardened, read, built, slept, and so on. 

 

There really is a lot to see and do.  It is a wonderful family adventure!

I will post more about the Blueberry Festival in a future post and link Part 2 back here.  If you are near Greenville South Carolina during the 2 weekend of July, be sure to spend your Saturday morning over at Roper Mountain Science Center. 

If you would like to check out more family adventures our family has enjoyed at RMSC, please read the posts listed here.


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