Reasons for Celebrating : Oxnard: Strawberry Festival opens with a record crowd. But some say field workers are overlooked.

A record first-day crowd of 28,000 turned out Saturday for the opening of the ninth annual California Strawberry Festival in Oxnard, and found countless ways to celebrate the honored berry.

For the hungry, the public had a choice of dozens of strawberry recipes, ranging from strawberry blintzes and shortcake to strawberry pizza.

For the competitive, strawberry-themed events included berry tart-tossing, shortcake-eating and a Strawberry Blonde Contest.

The festival also christened the newly opened College Park Amphitheater, with pop singer Rita Coolidge sprinkling her opening performance with praise for that luscious fruit of the Oxnard Plain.

But a small group of farm worker activists also forced the public to consider the role of the laborers who harvest the strawberries.

Carrying picket signs, demonstrators distributed flyers criticizing the festival for overlooking the workers, ignoring the heavy use of pesticides in the fields and promoting a contest for Strawberry Blondes. They said few, if any, blondes are found doing the backbreaking work in the fields.

Festival organizers downplayed the protest, saying that efforts to create events for berry pickers foundered when the activists stopped meeting with them.

The two-hour protest did not mar the day’s festivities for most who attended, with a record number of entertainers, arts and crafts booths and food concessions participating in the two-day festival.

With the Oxnard area producing $130-million worth of strawberries--20% of California’s entire crop--the festival has also become the premiere fund-raising event for many of the area’s nonprofit groups.

Last year, La Colonia Tenants Assn. raised $3,000 selling snacks and drinks during the festival, said Esther Lara, who worked inside the association’s hectic booth. The funds helped pay the way for low income tenants to visit Magic Mountain, and paid for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Mother’s Day festivities for Oxnard’s public housing tenants, she said.

For festival-goers Saturday, the rewards were more direct.

“I like the music, the food and the people,” said Nikii Kulee of Santa Barbara, who was attending her second festival. “This is a high-energy thing.”

“We came first to eat,” said Mindy Fitzer of Valencia as she sat before a plate stacked with Louisiana crawfish. Last year, Fitzer said, she and her husband bought a whirligig--an ornamental duck carved from wood whose wings spin around in the wind--and were back to check out more arts and crafts.

At the Strawberry Blonde Contest, girls and women competed in three age categories, adult, teen and junior, with the contestants’ speeches ranging from the frivolous to the profound.

“Strawberries are my favorite fruit--especially in margaritas and daiquiris,” said Debbie Hirth, a 40-year-old Moorpark mother of two.

Laura Farnsworth of Oxnard said she struggled to find something appropriate to say in her speech. At the last minute, she decided to praise the farm workers. “They plant the seeds and bring us the beauty of the fruit,” she said. “More than anything, I salute the field workers.”

Kimberly Zegan, a 28-year-old Camarillo housewife, was selected the festival’s Strawberry Blonde. “I couldn’t believe it,” Zegan said after her name was announced.

Betsy Harrison, a 17-year-old Simi Valley High School student, was named the Teen Strawberry Blonde, and 7-year-old Sherri Beck of Port Hueneme was selected as the festival’s Junior winner.

Outside the festival’s front gate, the protesters asked the public to either boycott the event or to refrain from eating the berries because of the pesticides.

They were ignored by most who waited in line to buy tickets, but a handful of listeners turned away and left because of the protest.

Richard C. Wong, a 78-year-old retired engineer from Port Hueneme, said he sympathized with the plight of the workers. “The farm workers are the ones who need help,” Wong said. “After all, they’re the ones who are the backbone of the strawberry industry.”

Inside, organizers said they were willing to work with the activists to include the strawberry workers in future festivals.

“If any one element is left out of the festival, it weakens it,” said Supervisor John K. Flynn, the festival’s co-chairman. “If they feel left out, then they need to be part of it.”