One of the highlights of the annual Blueberry Festival for most people is delicious food, which will be available in abundance Friday, August 5, and Saturday, August 6, during the 26th Annual Festival. The Blueberry Festival began in 1980 as a fundraiser for the Susquehanna County Historical Society and Free Library Association, which serves the county with a museum, a main library and three branches (Forest City, Hallstead-Great Bend, Susquehanna), and Books-By-Mail and Books-On-Wheels.

Breakfast and lunch will be served on the Village Green during the Festival. For breakfast (8-10:30am) there will be pancakes with blueberry sauce, sausage, and fruit. At lunchtime, the choices will include hamburgers, hotdogs, pizza, and more.

Members of the community will provide a variety of food and snacks all day on Friday and Saturday, starting of course with fresh local-grown blueberries. Blueberry muffins, ice cream, pie and other baked goods will be for sale, as well as lemonade and iced tea. Jams, jellies, and produce of all sorts are donated by local people to benefit the Association. You can even keep the Festival flavor going all year by purchasing one of the popular cookbooks featuring local recipes.

Once again there will be a Blueberry Muffin Contest. "Many wonderful cooks volunteer to bake muffins for the Festival," says Administrator/Librarian Susan Stone, "and this is a great way to honor the best home-made muffins." The muffins will be judged at 10am Friday by a panel of local celebrities. Afterwards, winning muffins will be available to buy! To enter, please submit two dozen home-made (no mixes) blueberry muffins by 9:30am Friday, accompanied by a form available at the Montrose Library ahead of time, on the library's website (www.susqcolibrary.org/bf.htm) or at the Muffin Table Friday morning. You don’t have to enter the contest to bring muffins for the table, and mixes are fine for those! Baked goods of all kinds are needed (please bring to the Library starting Thursday evening), as are volunteer workers. If you can spare an hour or two either day, please call 278-1881 or stop by the library.

Reminder: rehearsals are underway for the Massed Band Concert, to be held Saturday the 6th at 2pm. Please contact the Historical Society at 278-1881 if you would like to play.