Thursday 5/16 Open 9am to 6pm. The field is wet, but there are lots of great strawberries mixed in with water damaged berries. See the first picture in the comments for very good berries. If strawberries aren't for you, we have fresh kale and multiple types of lettuce for sale. We picked some kale today and turned it into our dinner, farm to table style. We used Pinch of Yum's Sausage, Kale, and White Bean Soup recipe (https://pinchofyum.com/sausage-kale-and-white-bean-soup). We made it vegetarian by using vegetable broth and Beyond Beef Hot Italian Sausage. Very very delicious!
Wednesday April 24 open 9am to 6pm. Upick is good, but there are a lot of water damaged berries too. It will help us if you can pick off those bad berries and drop them in the walk aisles. We are busy Wednesday and Thursday mornings with big field trips; the Goat Walk and Kid Zone will open at 12 pm.
Monday 4/15 and Tuesday 4/16 the farm will be closed for strawberry ripening. We want to allow the berries to fully ripen after Saturday's picking so you will have the opportunity to pick the very very best we can grow so we are giving the plants an extra day of rest. The farm will open Wednesday 9am to 6pm and strawberry picking will be excellent.
The Coffee Cottage was a popular spot this weekend.
Tuesday morning UPDATE: rain is drifting in slowly and will linger so we will be CLOSED all day today. Wednesday's forecast looks good, Thursday is 100% rain, and Friday-Sunday looks great.
Tuesday April 9th OPEN 9 am to 6 pm. U-pick strawberries is open but finding fully ripe berries will take some time. Picking will improve in another day or two.
The Goat Walk Zipline passed it's final state inspection and is now OPEN! The one time use ticket gets you unlimited time on the ropes course and zipline; once you come down you can't return. We encourage a parent or guardian to accompany young participants to help with fear of heights as we don't give refunds once a participant is harnessed and on the course. With the zipline open, our on-course operator has to operate the Zipline and won't be able to give much one-on-one attention to participants.
Thursday April 4th open 9am to 6pm. We will open our two half acre Ruby June strawberry fields for picking. This first day of picking will likely only last an hour or two after which we will close the fields, but all our activities and food will stay open until 6 pm. Be patient; we are about a week away from having a consistent supply of berries
Here's a short video of the corn maze being harvested and loading the corn into the corn bin, one of several activities available in the Kid Zone play area.
Turned on the sprinklers at 4am. Started making ice about 5am. The low in the field will probably be 28 at 7am. Applying about 200 gallons per minute over 3 acres of strawberries, and 1.25 acres are cozy under row covers.
We took row covers off the strawberries today after putting them on for the cold snap two weeks ago. The plants have not been enjoying the crazy amount of rain we've been getting.
Tuesday 10/3 CLOSED and we are spending the day finishing up planting our 2024 spring field of strawberry plants. We will plant 58,000 strawberry plants this season, 8,000 more than last year. For our very first strawberry season, we planted only 14,000 plants. Thank you for giving us the business that has allowed us to grow! 🍓🍓
Sunday 10/1 OPEN 9am to 6pm. Happy first day of October! Celebrate the start of the autumn month with some fresh apple cider donuts today!
Can you guess the theme of this year's maze with this video? 👀 Hint, make sure you have your volume up. Comment your guesses!
Our potbellies rooting around in their new mud puddle.
Some of the daily chores we have on the farm! Ft. the goats trying kudzu for the first time and the pigs deciding that their water trough is their new bathtub 🐷
We're already prepping the fields for the 2024 strawberry season by bottom plowing! The farmer's son, Daniel, is the driver in the video. He's been working on the farm every weekday this summer.
We found a new wild edible plant on the farm while looking for wild blackberries. These are autumn olive berries: red berries with white speckles and leaves that are silvery on the back (you can see at the end of the video). They taste kind of like a pomegranate seed but they have a large seed in the middle (also edible, but very chewy). They're actually an invasive plant brought over in the 1800s as decoration for lawns. They're nitrogen fixing, which means their roots have the ability to replenish nitrogen levels in the soil.
Kevin (aka the farmer, layer of railroads and tile, and many many more things) putting down tile in the new bakery trailer.
Saturday July 8 sweet corn 9 to 4. See Monday's post for details.
This train project is the most exhausting, labor intensive project we have gotten into on the farm. In this clip, Jay is packing rock ballast under each of 3500 RR ties with a 60 lb jackhammer. Each tie has 4 bolts attaching it to the rails; that's 14,000 bolts. Each tie is leveled before ballasting; level on straight runs, super-elavated in curved sections. We are doing this work lately in temps hitting 97 degrees.
Thursday May 4th OPEN 9am to 6pm. U-pick is good. There will be water damaged berries amidst good, ripe berries. Please pick off the bad berries and drop them in the walk aisles. Every picnic table on the farm will be occupied by school kids until about 1pm. The hayride will be busy with school tours until 1pm as well.
The color on the video is underwhelming, but rest assured, the berries are fully ripe, huge, and practically leap into your box. Do not pick near the closest corner of the field. The farther you walk into the field the better the berries. Pick them deep red all over. The entire field is Camarosas except the most distant 9 rows are Chandler. Thanks for your support! Kevin & Lara
Here are the sprinklers being tested at dusk. Nothing is more beautiful than a strawberry field covered in ice at the break of dawn, and strawberry farmers are so happy to see dawn after staying up all night long running under the freezing water to get to frozen sprinkler heads to bust off the ice. I haven't done frost protection with water since about 2014 when I rented a Charlotte fire hydrant by the month. After 2 seasons, the city wised up and started charging by the gallon. That was the end of sprinkler frost protection until now.
A video of the combine in action!
