Goleta Celebrates its 33rd Annual Lemon Festival
By Lilly Trautwein
Carpinteria has avocados. Oxnard has strawberries. Goleta has lemons.
Over the weekend of Sept. 26 to 27, citrus fans gathered in Goleta’s expansive Girsh Park for The Lemon Festival to feast on lemon themed desserts, buy jewelry and clothing from local vendors, and celebrate the city’s history and community.
With around 40,000 visitors every year and at least 300 volunteers to support such a crowd, opinions vary, but just about everybody can agree on one thing time and time again: the lemon meringue pie is the real star of the show. Kristen Miller, the president and CEO of Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce – the organization that leads this event – declared the pie her favorite part of the festival, and the long line in front of its booth proved that she wasn’t alone in her opinion.
The event featured nearly 100 vendors: world-famous lemonade, carnival games, trampolines and bouncy houses, and live entertainment from both of the festival’s stages. There were a variety of local bands, dance performances, and even pie eating contests from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. Numerous first responders and community organizations set up booths as well, offering CPR practice and showing off equipment, letting citizens acknowledge and interact with the people that keep their city safe and running.
While the festival’s official start was in the early ‘90s, it grew out of a small local harvest festival dating back to 1949. Now run by the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce, The Lemon Festival is meant to highlight the city’s history as a major center for lemon orchards and produce packing factories.
Miller shared the reasoning for putting on this event, stating, “As [Goleta] changed to more of a technology-based industry sector, we wanted to have a festival to remind everyone of our roots.”
If you couldn’t attend the festival this time around, keep your schedule clear for the third or fourth weekend of September next year! The sense of community, small town charm, and, of course, delicious baked goods are experiences you don’t want to miss.
