From staff reports
PINSON — Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley recently awarded the Alabama Butterbean Festival, which is held in Pinson, with a grant of $5,000 from the Alabama Tourism Department.
The honor follows the 2014 Alabama Butterbean Festival’s record-breaking attendance of more than 40,000 visitors in October.
The award letter from Bentley said the Alabama Butterbean Festival is helping grow business and create jobs in Alabama’s tourism industry. This year the festival featured more than 150 arts and crafts vendors, encouraging visitors to purchase local goods. Bentley closed his message by thanking the festival for the hard work to make Alabama a more successful and productive state.
For the past nine years, the Alabama Butterbean Festival turns downtown Pinson into one of the largest festivals in the Southeast. It’s free to the public and rounds up country cooks, families and die-hard fans of butterbeans for a fun-filled weekend including live music, carnival rides, fair food, petting zoo and pony rides.
All the festival’s proceeds go to local nonprofit, the Pinson Education Foundation, which donates grants and scholarships to fund projects in Pinson schools, like uniforms for the Pinson Valley High School marching band.
The Alabama Butterbean Festival also features the Guinness world record-holding butterbean pot, set in 2010 for the largest pot of baked beans with 1,010.65 gallons.