Pandemic Picking: Strawberry Season Came Early This Year

PUNGO, Virgina – Strawberries came early this year in Virginia due to a mild winter. The only problem is, with COVID-19, who's going to pick them? Those concerns caused some farmers to cancel their popular "You Pick" Season while others opened their fields with some restrictions. 

The weather has been picture perfect for strawberry picking in Pungo, a rural area near Virginia Beach. Bruce Henley, owner of Flip Flop Farm, just hoped folks would take advantage with new safety rules in place due to the coronavirus.

"The rows in the field are 5 feet apart so we're putting a flag down every other middle and telling people to stay down the rows without the flag and that puts them 10 feet apart in the field," Henley explained.

And when people weigh and pay, Henley says they can rest assured, "We're extra sanitizing, we're wiping down all the buckets, wiping off the scale in between each customer, wearing latex gloves, doing all we can."

Here in Virginia Beach, strawberry picking is an annual tradition for many families in the spring, and despite the coronavirus, people like Brittney Jeffries, her firefighter husband and two children, were out enjoying this beautiful weather while still maintaining social distancing. 

"We live close by and always get really excited for strawberry season, just to be out – everyone seems to be social distancing well and just to be out here with our kids too," Jeffries said.

Just down the road, however, Mike Cullipher kept his strawberry fields closed to picking.

"We're completely opposite of anything we've ever done before," Cullipher said. "But with everything going on and with the CDC guidelines and what the governor has mandated, our family decided that our first priority was keeping us and the people who help us, our employees, safe. Our second priority was keeping our customers safe."

So Cullipher decided to take a different route – online ordering and pick-up service. You can order his strawberries here.  https://cullipherfarm.com/

"That's the preferred way if you go through our website, pre-pay, we give you a time slot where you can pick up your box or bag or what have you." 

The decision did not come easy.

"We feel bad that we're depriving people of the opportunity to come and pick and it's costing us money frankly because most people want to do that so we know we're losing business but you have to do what you're comfortable with and this is all we're comfortable with right now," Cullipher explained. 

Another problem for both farmers is manual labor. The pandemic kept many seasonal workers home, so Cullipher hired a local girl's high school basketball team to help pick the delicious berries.

That was great news for 17-year-old Korinne Piper, who normally works as a hostess at a local restaurant this time of year, but the restaurant is closed because of the coronavirus.

"And he (Mr. Cullipher) said that we could come out here and pick strawberries while social distancing and get paid, I said, count me in because I worked at a restaurant and I can't work (there) right now."

Meanwhile back at Flip Flop Farm, Michelle Klepk and her daughter Nellie picked enough strawberries to go around. 

"Today we wanted to get out of the house because we've been cooped up for so long with this social distancing and we wanted to pick some strawberries so we can send some joy to some of our friends," Klepk said.

When asked what she plans to do with her berries she said, "We are going to cut these up and make our homemade whipping cream and make shortcake," she said with a smile. And that is a sweet ending to this story.

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