North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Ginda Fisher <list@ginda.us>]

...... Original Message .......
On Sun, 25 May 2008 10:40:18 -0500 "Jim Fruth" <jfruth@tds.net> wrote:
>Mark Angermayer asked about selling fruit.  I'll report to the two methods 
>we have tried, at farmers' markets and U-Pick.
> . . .
>
>We tried doing a U-Pick . . .
>    WHAT A ZOO!  We quickly learned that we had made a tragic mistake.  
Most 
>of our U-Pick customers were (sort  of) wonderful but the minority turned 
>out to be too much to deal with.  Some people who paid to get in felt they 
>had the right to pick anywhere and anything they wanted, and worse; they 
>stepped anywhere, smashed bushes wrecked stuff and more.  We had to treat 
>them like four-year-olds!  The biggest problem is that all pickers, 
>including those that seemed wonderful, dropped alot of berries.  

I read an analysis of the economics of u-pick farms in NJ several years ago 
and one of the most striking figures was the perecent of fruit (or other 
produce) that's wasted on a u-pick farm.  I forget the actual figure, but 
it was more than half.  Customers don't want to take anything that isn't 
'perfect', so they'll leave slightly blemished fruit to rot.  If they pick 
something and notice it isn't perfect (under-ripe, over-ripe, blemished, 
whatever) they will drop it.  U-pick customers are also sloppy and miss 
some of the 'perfect' fruit until it's over-ripe.

As both a backyard gardener and a u-pick customer I admit to being a lot 
pickier about u-pick fruit than about my own.

>All those 
>dropped berry seeds grow!  And become weeds that I have to pull out.  
Added 
>to the problem is that not all seeds sprout in the same year so year after 
>year I'm having to pull seedlings from the same spots.

This is less of a problem with apples, peaches, cherries, tomatoes, and 
sweet corn, which is mostly what I've 'u-picked'

>    And then there is the problem of pickers eating more berries than they 
>put in their container.  Two people would enter at the same time and leave 
>together, one with several gallons of berries and the other with only a 
>handful, having eaten the rest.  A fellow I know who runs a U-Pick has a 
>scale at the entrance to the berry patch; he weighs pickers coming in and 
>going our and they pay the difference.

Here I have mixed feelings.  Of course the farmer needs to be paid, but 
part of the reason people go to 'u-pick' places is for the experience, and 
frankly, the natural experience of picking berries includes a lot of eating 
berries.  When I pick my own raspberries I rarely bring more than half of 
what I pick into the house.  My experience harvesting wild blueberries and 
picking my backyard blueberries is similar.  Berries are so wonderful 
picked fresh, and so fragile and hard to get home intact.

if I pick apples, I may try one or two, and easily fill a heavy bag to take 
home.  Berries are just different.

Weighing the customers will drive away the women and tempt the men to pee 
in your bushes, but I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to charge by the 
hour, instead of by the pound, and encourage your customers to enjoy the 
berries however they see fit?  I've never tried to administer a u-pick 
farm, so I have no idea if this would work.

___
Ginda