There are so many festivals all over Tampa happening in the next month from desserts to french fries. One of the healthier festivals is the Tampa Bay Collard Green Festival in St. Pete. It’s an immersive experience for the entire family. A Kids Zone for the children and several presentations throughout the day keeps everyone entertained.

Tampa Bay Collard Green Festival founders Boyzell Hosey and Samantha Harris created the festival to show how small tweaks to your diet can change your health for the better:

“It’s interesting to see how many festivals start out as a simple idea or a joke between friends. The Tampa Bay Collard Green Festival is one more to add to the list. Founder Boyzell Hosey, also Tampa Bay Times’ Deputy Editor in Photography and Multimedia, says the idea is to help educate the community about healthier ways of living through what we eat. 

“Once we shared the notion of how a novel way of cooking a collard green could spur other ideas, my wife and I started experimenting with different ways of making them in an electric pressure cooker,” Hosey tells CL.  

He and co-founder Samantha Harris initially laughed at the concept. When they did their research, they found there were several other collard green festivals across the country. They traveled to The Original Collard Greens Cultural Festival in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia, to get a look at how it operates. 

“We started thinking of the advantages we have with bringing a collard green festival here. One of them is the weather because in the winter because we can grow greens in Florida during that time,” Hosey explains. “

This year’s festival is Saturday, February 15th at Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum in St. Petersburg. Learn more about why they started the festival and this year’s events here.

PHOTO COURTESY OF TAMPA BAY COLLARD GREEN FESTIVAL