FARMINGTON — Dots of red hung from the raised beds of green plants in David Pike’s strawberry fields located off the Whittier Road in Farmington late Wednesday afternoon as people came for an annual outing of picking their own.
“They are yummy. They are also addictive. You can’t pick just one,” said Shelley Seavey of Strong as she quickly filled a cardboard container. “It’s pretty good picking.”
Owner David Pike opened the fields to the public last Friday but pickers were already working on his latest (to ripen) variety of berries, he said.
“I don’t think we’ll have them for July 4 or if we do, they’ll be very limited,” he said of the early season with weather perfect for the berries. “This morning it was about 36 degrees in the field but days reach up to 70-75 degrees.”
Large growers like the 75 degree temperature during the day and 50-55 degrees at night, that’s perfect, he said.
After the last couple difficult growing years, Pike is down to two acres of berries. Some of those are saved for his own pickers to sell berries in the Subway parking lot. A good part of his help, including his son, who teaches music in RSU 9, are still in school this week, he said while noting his Wednesday workers were taking finals this morning, working tonight and heading back for more finals in the morning.
People have been coming distances for the chance to pick with the fields open in the morning till about noon then closing and re-opening at 4 p.m. for those who work, he said.
Patricia Stanley of Wilton understands the draw of picking your own, a regular annual activity, she said while working alongside her mother-in-law, Hannah Stanley, also of Wilton.
“I’ve done it for years,” Patricia said, recounting raking blueberries in Salem as a teen and picking fiddleheads for Adrian Wells in Wilton, who canned local produce. Now a crossing guard for the Wilton Police Department, Stanley intends to freeze some of the berries, eat a few and make a strawberry shortcake.
“It’s the beginning of summer,” Hannah said of annual rite of picking your own strawberries.
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