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  • From: Adriana Gutierrez & Dennis LaGatta <gutierrez-lagatta AT home.com>
  • To: market farming <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: U-Pick strawberries
  • Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 08:08:25 -0500


It's strawberry season here in Florida. Yesterday I visited a U-Pick
operation that had some nice procedures which streamlined people
management and checkout. They basically sold their strawberries at
$7.50 for a level one gallon plastic pail which they provided. These
are similar to those used for cheap ice-cream, only with handles (the
grower says he gets them from a source in Ohio). This instantly
eliminates the confusion on the incoming end of weighing a variety of
sizes of containers provided by the pickers.

At check-out time you simply multiply the number of buckets x $7.50 and
the customer is on his way. They let you keep the bucket so there are
no delays for weighing or bagging. I suspect these procedures would
work for tomatoes or other fruits also. If you want to recycle the
picking containers you could ask the customer to bag his stuff and stack
the buckets for you after check-out. Quart sized containers were also
available for $2.50.

These were the nicest fields I have ever picked strawberries in. They
were raised plastic mulched beds. The strawberries, huge Camerosas,
were clean and the plants were weed free. And as a bonus, there were no
fire-ants. This is definitely a place I will go back to again and
again.

Adriana Gutierrez
Green Cuisine
Sarasota, Florida



  • U-Pick strawberries, Adriana Gutierrez & Dennis LaGatta, 01/31/2000

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