IF YOU GO
● The 2025 Montrose Blueberry Festival is open on Aug. 1 and 2 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
● The Blueberry 5K and Fun Run is on Saturday, Aug. 2 at 7:15 a.m.
● Blueberry pancake breakfast starts at 8 a.m.
● Most booths open at 9 a.m.
● Non-blueberry-related food stands open at 10:30 a.m.
For volunteer Peg Miller, the Montrose Blueberry Festival shows how the small community of Susquehanna Borough has a big heart.
The Philadelphia native moved to Susquehanna County around 20 years ago and said she was amazed to see how much people love their town.
“It's just a wonderful, small community … people are so giving and willing to help everyone else out,” she said Thursday.
The festival is the largest yearly fundraiser for the county’s library system, the Susquehanna County Historical Society and Free Library Association. Festival Chairman Stephen Spero said it makes somewhere between 15 to 20% of its yearly budget, depending on the year.
“This library system is the only library system in the state of Pennsylvania that operates a museum with its own dedicated professional staff, and we couldn't do it without the help of the community,” Spero said.
Miller runs the festival’s bake sale tent as its chair. She said she named this year’s tent the ‘Kindness Boutique’ because of the sheer number of donations from the community.
She said over 150 people donated food, homemade goods and their time to put together the two-day festival for this Friday and Saturday.
“Tomorrow morning, they'll start donating the baked goods … People will just be dropping by all morning, dropping off cookies they made, dropping off breads that they made … One person dropped off a crocheted afghan (blanket,) which is just beautiful,” Miller said.
Montrose is Susquehanna’s county seat, its governmental center. It has a population of about 1,427 people, but Miller said the festival makes the community feel large.
She said visitors come to the festival from all over the state, like Scranton, Dallas, and Honesdale. Others come from out-of-state, from Syracuse and Binghamton, New York and even as far as North Carolina.
“We get a lot of people from out-of-town on Saturday, and they're just amazed at how big this little town is really,” Miller said.
Blueberry everything at Montrose Blueberry Festival
Cindy Reynolds, festival publicity chair, said volunteers gathered Wednesday at Montrose Area High School to bake 160 dozen blueberry muffins and blueberry buckle, which is served with blueberry ice cream. She described buckle as a kind of cake or apple crisp, sans the apple.
Reynolds said volunteers will sell blueberry-themed sweatshirts, t-shirts and even onesies. Every year the festival also has a potter who designs a new mug — they sell out fast.
“Those will probably be sold out by 11 tomorrow morning,” Reynolds said.
The festival also serves a blueberry pancake breakfast both mornings starting at 8 a.m. and a blueberry 5K and fun run on Saturday at 7:15 a.m.
Reynolds said this is the festival’s first year running a baking competition. Everyone who enters will get a 2025 Blueberry Festival spatula. There’s three categories in the bake off: sauces and dips, scones and pie — all made with blueberries, of course. Spectators can buy the auctioned-off treats after the competition.
Besides the bake off, Reynolds said both days feature a blueberry pie-eating contest, which includes an adult and youth division.
“That's as much fun for the spectators as it is for the participants as well,” Reynolds said.
More than just blueberries at the Montrose Blueberry Festival
If blueberries have you feeling blue, there’s also quite a lot of other events going on at this year’s blueberry festival.
There will be a silent auction with about 75 donated items split over both days. Reynolds said this year’s auction features original watercolor paintings and some antique pottery. The festival also features a white elephant and book sale with thousands of donated items.
Visitors can also find non-blueberry-related foods at the festival, like meatball subs, pizza and hot dogs.
Susquehanna library system’s largest fundraiser
Spero said the festival gets so much attention that most people forget it's a fundraiser for the Susquehanna County Historical Society and Free Library Association’s four branch libraries.
“We could not exist without community support … every sale goes directly to pay (library) staff salaries or [to] buy books,” Spero, a former library board of trustees president, said on Tuesday in Montrose.
Before the festival grew to be the library system’s largest fundraiser, Miller said it started out as a small thing organized by a group of moms involved with the Susquehanna County Library’s story hour events.
“They had extra books they wanted to sell … and then it just kind of grew from there and it was so organic,” she said.
“The library is such a central place for families … and people just want to help the library,” Miller said.
Spero said the library system receives around 25% of its revenue from state aid, 25% from county taxpayers and raises the remaining 50% itself from grants, donations and fundraisers for a total of about a $1.1 million budget.
Miller said the festival is now more important than ever to fundraise for the library system as federal cuts to library funding challenge state and local finances. She said the county is fortunate to have four libraries.
“Especially in a small, rural community, [our libraries are] the center of the community … It's a very large county geographically. We have four branches … and, geographically, they're over an hour away from each other,” Miller said.
Pennsylvania libraries receive funding from the organization from the Office of Commonwealth Libraries and the State Library of Pennsylvania. In 2023, the state received just over $3 million in grants, according to the office.
The Montrose Blueberry Festival is on Aug. 1 and 2 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on both days on the Montrose Green.
