Blueberry farming has been a thing in Pender County for nearly a century, and wild blueberries have been growing in Southeastern North Carolina since time immemorial.
But it's been just since 2004 that folks have flocked to Burgaw for the annual N.C. Blueberry Festival each June. The festival returns for its 19th celebration (two festivals were lost to the pandemic) June 14-15 in Burgaw, with live music, vendors, a recipe contest and of course lots and lots of blueberries, while supplies last of course.
The festival's roots, if you will, trace to 2003. That's when, former Burgaw Town Manager Martin Beach told the StarNews in 2013, former Pender County tourism director Katherine Adams, former (then future) Burgaw Mayor Pete Cowan, Wayne Batten of Pender County's N.C. Cooperative Extension service, Burgaw antiques dealer John Westbrook and others met to think of a way to get people to visit Burgaw.
Blueberries happened to be in season at the time the meeting was held, so the idea of a festival celebrating Pender County's biggest crop — the county's tourism website currently lists more than a half-dozen blueberry farms there — was born.
Organizers held a pancake breakfast and a pork chop dinner to raise money to put on that first festival, and they hired the same bands who were going to be in Morehead City's N.C. Seafood Festival that year to save a few bucks.
The first N.C. Blueberry Festival was held in 2004, and while about 1,000 people were expected, some 5,000 showed up. The festival was officially a hit and attendance has continued to climb, from 10,000 five years in to more than 30,000 after 10 years.
Now put on by the N.C. Blueberry Festival Association, attendance in recent years has been between 40,000 and 50,000, with economic impact estimated at more than $2 million per year.
Early festival staples like a student essay contest have fallen by the wayside, but live music and the annual recipe contest is still going strong, and the festival has added such events as a street fair, car show, 5K race, Tour De Blueberry bike race, barbecue cook-off, blueberry farm tours and more.
It's even spawned such spin-off events as Burgaw's New Year's Eve Blueberry Drop.
All the while, the reason behind the festival — blueberry farming — has always stayed front and center. Pender is one of three North Carolina counties (the other two are Bladen and Sampson) to lead the state in blueberry production.
According to the website of the N.C. Blueberry Council, a nonprofit that promotes the state's blueberry farming industry, the cultivation of blueberries in Pender County can be trace to Harold Graham Huntington, a World War I veteran and native of New Jersey who was born in 1897.
After starting a lettuce and celery farm in Florida that failed, Huntington turned to blueberries and, with his father, identified Pender County as an ideal place to grow them.
In 1927, Huntington bought 1,640 acres near Ivanhoe and began the work of clearing the land. By the early 1930s he had rasied his first crop and the rest, as they say, is history.
Want to go?
What: N.C. Blueberry Festival
When: June 14-15
Where: Downtown Burgaw
Info: 910-259-2007 or NCBlueberryFestival.com.
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