In just 35 years or so, Pick Your Own strawberries have become part of the Great British summer and up until recent years were just as unpredictable. However, industry innovation and growing techniques have helped to reduce issues such as frost and blight and even made the act of picking much easier! With this in mind, step further into my berry blog and I’ll take you back to where it all started……
In the mid 1970s, John Carter started one of the earliest Pick Your Own (PYO) enterprises in the UK. He’d seen the idea in the USA and planted five acres of land on his South Oxfordshire farm to grow strawberries for people to pick and enjoy during the summer months.
PYO was very successful, albeit seasonal, and over the years Millets has continued to diversify and has expanded to include a farm shop, restaurants, garden centre and seasonal attractions such as a Maize Maze.
The PYO, however, has remained a core part of the farm’s set up, despite the lure of cheap all-year-round imports in the supermarkets, and in recent years has experienced a growth in popularity. Local people are returning to the fields to pick locally grown fruits and veg at the farm – and when at their most delicious – from field to fork in as little time as possible, thereby preserving flavour and texture.
The PYO season at Millets Farm Centre now lasts from May to September and includes over 30 different varieities of soft fruit and orchard fruit – as well as vegetables such as sweetcorn and purple sprouting. We continue to introduce new varieities that are selected for flavour not shelflife and employ different growing methods such as poly tunnels and table tops for strawberries. This protects the crop from the unpredictable British summer weather as well as our customer’s backs!
The weather over the past few weeks has generated a bumper harvest of deliciously sweet strawberries – warm days followed by cool nights have ensured that the berries look and taste perfect. Elsanta is our main crop, which together with Premier and Evie will guarantee our strawberries last not forever, but until the end of the summer at least!
Til I scoff my next strawberry fresh from the patch, keep picking!
