Food festivals are the epitome of warm-weather Ontario: rambling through charming towns, shovelling sun-warmed berries into your mouth, sampling — and celebrating — our homegrown bounty. Fill your summer weekends with day trips to find the freshest fruit and veggie fests, all free*, and all well worth the short drive from Toronto. Whitchurch-Stouffville June 28 to 30 The 40th edition of the will be packed with live music, kid-friendly entertainment and food vendors serving everything from lobster balls and poutine to, of course, fresh strawberries.
Bonus: local brewery Muddy York Brewing Company is creating a strawberry beer in honour of the event. Visitors who want to pick their own berries can hop on the Strawberry Express Trolley Tour bus, which provides shuttle service to nearby strawberry farms. Blenheim July 18 to 20 promises three days of live performances, fun-filled competitions and sidewalk sales by local vendors.
(And cherry pie, lots of it.) A festival highlight: the quirky Canadian National Cherry Pit Spit Championship. In previous years, more than 100 participants have gone head-to-head to see whose spit pit can go the farthest and earn the title of national champion.
Other activities include pie-eating and pie-baking contests where you can indulge or show off your baking skills, as well as a ‘cherry-oke’ sing-off. Alliston Aug. 9 to 11 Activities at the go beyond just spuds as the town celebrates its agricultural roots with three days of festivities.
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