PHOTOS: Thousands Of Berries Served Up With Fun At Strawberry Fest

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Windsor and Essex county residents are enjoying the 27^th annual LaSalle Strawberry Festival this weekend.

Sue Desjarlais, a councilor in the Town of LaSalle and co-chair of the LaSalle Strawberry Festival, has been a part of the festivities in LaSalle for 15 years. She said she’s seen it evolve over the years, getting bigger and better each time.

“This is our third year of using local berries which is really great, and the berries are awesome, because I sampled them the other day,” said Desjarlais. “Through the weekend we’ll go through about 300 flats of berries which is about 2,000 pounds of berries, that’s a lot of strawberries.”

The newest attraction this year is the LaSalle Smoke Off where amateur and professional smokers alike are cooking meat all day long and will be serving them to guests.

They also have wine and beer in the Smoke Off  tent, which is an attraction the festival hasn’t had for quite some time. Desjarlais said it’s a little different because it’s enclosed and a bit smaller, so they have to monitor numbers closely. However with the assistance of local police and fire departments, it has been very successful.

“We have a great carnival too, we have about the safest carnival in the province,” said Deskarlais. “They’re new, they’re clean, they’re well maintained. They have very strict policies with their employees as far as drinking and ‘extra curricular activities.’ But that’s one of things that makes them so safe. They’ve been with us probably for 20 years and we’ll keep them on as long as we can because they’re really good.”

For more information about the festival, visit the Windsor-Essex Summer Festival Guide.