Strawberry Fields Forever (NO)
Hands stained crimson, I quickly climbed into my car, the backs of my legs burning as they touched the black seats. More red stains seeped into the floor mats, no doubt trailed in with my hiking boots. I slammed the door and pressed the brake until I heard the engine roar to life. I rooted around the glove compartment until success! I yanked out a wet wipe and frantically scrubbed my hands. Some sticky redness came off, but much remained under the fingernails and around the cuticles. As the air conditioning began whirring, I looked in the rearview mirror and took off my faded baseball cap. Sweat had caused the wispy hair framing my face to curl in the heat, and a layer of dust had covered my glasses.
If this sounds like the scene of a crime, I would agree. However, this was simply my daily summer routine working on a berry farm in southeastern Ohio. The red stains came from strawberries, the main crop produced at Stacy Family Farm. With a season lasting from Mother’s Day until Father’s Day, strawberries were just coming into season when I got home from Columbia last May. Every morning, sometimes seven days a week, I would drive about half an hour to the farm through winding West Virginia roads. The farm is known for their strawberries, but I helped with other blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes, and more. The humid summer
Many people think farming is antiquated, but it is so technologically advanced. One of my main roles was picking strawberries. You might imagine someone hunching over in the fields, but we had it quite luxurious. The farm has strawberry “pickers,” solar-powered machines that we laid down on and that rolled between rows. They even had roofs to block the sun. This was also a nice, quiet break from the more talkative cashier role. Many customers wanted to know how we grow our berries, including use of pesticides or GMOs. I was always happy to explain that this farm doesn’t use pesticides, and that genetically-modified strawberries don’t exist. Also, GMOs have been revolutionary in how the world is fed, which many people overlook.
During strawberry season, a team of workers is needed to keep up with the cash registers, washing buckets, driving the side-by-side, and the demand for pre-picked berries. We calculated that, on average, we each picked about seventy pounds of strawberries per hour during peak season! This only lasts a few weeks though, and hotter weather in June quickly demolishes the fragile berries that are left in the fields. Immediately after strawberries end, blueberries start coming into season. I never liked blueberries until I had the ones from this farm. To prepare, we dragged dozens of fifty-pound nets up the blueberry hill. If you don’t cover blueberry bushes with nets, birds will eat them all. Even with the nets, birds manage to sneak under, so freeing birds from the nets was a daily occurrence.
Raspberries and tomatoes also started in June. We had red, black, and gold raspberries. We sold many tomatoes to nearby restaurants and to auctions, as the high tunnel greenhouse we grew them in produced far too many to sell solely on the farm.
One humid morning, I worked on training raspberries with my coworker Taylor. This entailed snaking raspberry tendrils up through wires so they grow up, not along the ground. Unfortunately, raspberries also have unforgiving thorns. To protect our skin, we suited up in long pants, long sleeves, and thick work gloves. Within an hour, we were soaked with sweat, the sun beating down relentlessly. To my surprise, my legs were covered in cuts from where the thorns had grazed me.
I want to work in sustainable agriculture or food science, so working on a strawberry farm was perfect for me. My family has been coming to this farm to pick strawberries since I was very young, so it was already close to my heart. Something about having a part in growing something changes how you see it. Instead of a random box of blueberries from the grocery store, you see the labor of protecting them from birds, pulling endless weeds that attempt to choke the bushes, and watching the bushes grow year to year.
By Cece
