Strawberry Dreams

Unicoi Festival Has Been Renamed In Honor Of Late Local Farmer Wayne Scott

UNICOI, Tenn. – In nearly a half-century of farming, Wayne Scott helped put strawberries on the map of Northeast Tennessee.
Now the Town of Unicoi’s annual community festival has been renamed in the late Scott’s honor.
“I think it’s real nice and everything on his behalf,” said Scott’s daughter Carole Scott, 56. “He’d be happy they’re having the festival. But he’d think it was unnecessary to have it named for him.”
Carole’s 54-year-old brother, Steve, another of Wayne’s children, said, “He was never much for a lot of attention.”
Wayne Scott died on Dec. 29, 2008 at age 84. A lifelong farmer and a vocational education teacher at Unicoi County High School for 20 years, Wayne Scott began growing strawberries in the late 1950s with his wife, the late Mary Lou Scott.
“He took a leave of absence from teaching,” Steve Scott remembered. “And he realized he’d rather farm than teach school.”
Today, the Scott descendants carry on the family farming business, harvesting strawberries, tomatoes, sweet corn and half-runner beans in Washington County, Tenn.

‘PEOPLE GET EXCITED’
Scott’s Strawberries, growing in a 28-acre field of sandy soil along the Nolichucky River, are shipped to Food City stores across Virginia and Tennessee, including outlets in Bristol, Abingdon, Damascus, Marion, Chilhowie, Blountville and Piney Flats.
On Tuesday, dozens of workers picked batches of berries, loading the fruit into crates and boxes.
“That’s the good thing about strawberries,” Steve Scott said. “They’re the first major fruit of the year. And people get excited about ‘em.”
The Scotts grow as many as one million strawberries a year.
And growing them takes longer than people think, Steve Scott said. “People think strawberries are just something that you go out in the field and pick in the spring.”
The current plants are a California variety of strawberries that the Scott family planted nearly a year ago in a greenhouse.
Transplanted to the field last September, the berries survived winter and began producing fruit for the first picking on May 3.
Now, Carole Scott said, workers will pick strawberries from the plants every three or four days until early July.
“After that,” Steve Scott said, “the plant will quit throwing fruit buds.”
Steady rain in the past couple of weeks has been good for crops, producing many green strawberries, Steve Scott said.
“We just need a lot of sunshine to ripen ‘em,” he added. “The sunshine just makes ‘em sweeter.”

‘SPECIAL YEAR’
Saturday’s Wayne Scott Strawberry Festival will mark the second annual event, though the festival began several years earlier; it had a six-year hiatus, said Linda Davis March, the community relations coordinator for the Town of Unicoi.
Last year’s festival attracted a crowd of 2,000, March said.
This year’s event features craft vendors, an antique automobile display, strawberry recipe contest a pie-throwing contest and children’s games.
Entertainment includes performances by Pleasant Hill Band; Adam Larkey & Mountain Time; Country Classics; Art & Cathy; The Red Barn Band; and No Name But His.
Johnny Lynch, the town’s mayor, said, “This is a particularly special year to all of us as we dedicate our festival to our good friend, Mr. Wayne Scott.”

IF YOU GO
What: Wayne Scott Strawberry Festival
Where: Unicoi Elementary School, 404 Massachusetts Ave., off Unicoi Drive at I-26’s Exit 32 (near Johnson City, Tenn.)
Travel time from Bristol: About 50 minutes
When: May 16, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Admission: Free
Info: (423) 743-7162