This year’s Strawberry Festival may not get under way until the weekend, but already you can find one of Cullman County’s signature crops waiting for sale under the shade at the Cullman Festhalle.

In fact, if you’re in the market for strawberries, hitting the Festhalle farmer’s market this Thursday, when customer traffic is light, might be a solid head start to Strawberry Festival weekend — when it’s not uncommon for the fruit to sell out by early afternoon.

“If you’re coming to the Strawberry Festival for berries, you need to come early,” explained William Burks, one of the vendors parked Tuesday at the farmer’s market, where gallon buckets of his locally-raised strawberries were selling at a brisk pace.

“At a good festival, we can’t raise enough berries to keep from running out,” he added. “And, of course, when we do run out, then we’ve had a good day.”

Burks and about 10 other area farmers will be at the Festhalle Saturday, offering not only strawberries, but other in-season local produce. “On Saturday we’ll have onions; we’ll have lettuce — and we’ll have the strawberries,” said Burks.

Even when a festival doesn’t crowd the area, the Festhalle farmer’s market gives small-scale local farmers a place to offload their goods. Burks, who devotes about half an acre of his ten-acre Simcoe farm to strawberries, said it’s an ideal place for self-described truck farmers like himself and his neighboring vendors.

“We’re open Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 7-2. It was basically designed on those alternating days for smaller farmers, so that they can pick their produce on one day, and then come in and sell it the next. That way it’s local, and it’s fresh, for the customers.”

Sponsored by Cullman Parks and Recreation, this year’s Strawberry Festival will take place all day Saturday at the Festhalle and surrounding parks and businesses.

The festival features live music, more than 100 arts and crafts vendors, kids’ activities and a vintage car show. In addition to the fresh strawberries, there’ll be strawberry ice cream, strawberry shortcake, strawberry lemonade, strawberry daiquiris — pretty much any appealing food or drink that features strawberries as a main ingredient.

Visit the event’s official Facebook page at www.facebook.comCullmanStrawberryfest for additional information, call the Cullman Civic Center at 256-734-9157, or email info@cullmanrecreation.org for more information.