U-pick Farms Are Open for Business — and Striving to Keep Workers & Visitors Safe

For five-year old Max, the best part of a recent hot morning spent picking strawberries at Fishkill Farms in New York’s Dutchess County was getting to run down the long rows to their end. Eight-year-old Ethan was disinterested in the actual harvest. For him, the best part was getting to hang out with Max and Max’s older brother, Oliver, for the boys’ inaugural pandemic excursion.

For Katie Ross, the Farms’ marketing communications and events manager, being able to welcome families to pick their own first fruits of the area’s u-pick season meant the chance to recoup lost revenue. “Our farm store is closed and we can’t offer hayrides or other normal farm activities, so this makes up for some of that,” she said.

U-pick represents just a fraction of US agricultural sales — Travel & Leisure reports that only 5 percent of US apple orchards, for example, offer this option. But it can be an important source of income for many small and medium-sized farms in a normal year, and it’s the reason some of them (although certainly not all of them) decided not to cancel their u-pick operations for 2020. In order to make it work in this decidedly abnormal Covid-19 year, Fishkill and other farms across the country have devised some complex protocols to keep staff and visitors safe.

Below, we check in on how a few of them are faring. Not sure if a favorite u-pick is open in your area, or if you’re comfortable with the safety measures they’ve put in place? Check their website — many, like Mountainview Blueberry Farm in Snohomish, WA, have posted clear guidelines — or give them an old-fashioned phone call.

Online Reservations for U-Pick

Fishkill Farms has a more elaborate system in place than either Tom’s or Cedar Circle. No real surprise, what with their 170 farm acres, multiple u-pick crops —including numerous other berries, peaches, peas and mixed vegetables, pumpkins, and top crop apples come September — and, within driving distance of NYC, the potential for hundreds of people to show up in a single day.

The farm’s plan started with figuring out how to limit the number of guests that arrive on any given day. That meant setting up an online reservation system, with room for 144 daily reservations for up to 5 people, staggered every half-hour. This has had the unexpected bonus of helping to alleviate disappointment among visitors who might arrive on a Sunday morning, to discover that the Saturday hoards “Had done a number on the fields,” said Ross. Two weeks into strawberry season, all slots, every day, had been pretty much filled, mostly with parents and small children for whom low-to-the-ground strawberry plants make for easy picking.

Things are fixing to become more complicated in coming few weeks, though, as multiple crops become ready for harvest all at the same time. “We might have to switch to a pick-your-own package situation, where we’ll let people pick the best of what we have for that day, but we can’t guarantee that you’ll get just cherries or blueberries,” said Ross. Safety measures might have to be changed up, too, possibly in the way visitors check-in, although Ross thinks apple and pumpkin season will be a little less fraught — “There’s more space out there than in the strawberry patch.”

The farm has received some pushback on social media from people upset about mask and distancing mandates, and who are unhappy they can no longer pick a single quart of berries; the reservation system prompts visitors to pre-pay for a minimum of four quarts, which Ross said is necessary given the space limits the farm has to contend with. Nevertheless, folks who have made it to the farm have provided plenty of positive feedback about the changes — enough, hopefully, to keep them coming back for more, and to keep farm operations like Fishkill viable through another season.

Top photo by Ada Cowan.