Neighbors saw a need and filled it — with strawberries

“Fun” is not the word that came to mind back when I’d drive a long distance in a van full of reluctant adolescents to pick 100 pounds of strawberries, especially if the patch was sparse and weedy. My efforts to make it enjoyable, such as letting the kids throw a rotten berry at me every time they picked 50 and buying ice cream on the way home, did not prove all that helpful.

But when I stopped in at Hazelwood Berries on Powerline Road on a recent Saturday, that word came to mind repeatedly: This was just plain fun.

The experience included pleasant weather, clean and healthy plants, friends and neighbors scattered across the patch, and Sweet Sunrise berries so large and plentiful that I filled a bucket in 10 minutes. All that, plus I was free to eat as I picked, the freshly picked berries popping with flavor that no grocery store berry can ever match.

Back home, I stemmed, washed, and cut berries to top fluffy Sunday dinner desserts the next day. Others went into the refrigerator for cereal toppings and snacking, half a bucketful went home with my son and his wife, and a few ended up in the freezer for winter. 

Part of the joy of fresh berries is that they deteriorate quickly, so eating as many as you want is a virtuous and guilt-free indulgence.

The 2021 closure of my favorite farm stand, Horse Creek Farms on Peoria Road, where many of us in the Halsey/Harrisburg area picked our berries, left a hole in the market. 

There was also an empty three-quarters of an acre in front of the house of our neighbors, Preston and Heather Kropf, who decided to fill both gaps with a U-pick berry patch.

This is their first season, and they offer three varieties of berries — Sweet Sunrise, Shuksan and Mary’s Peak — $15 per bucket for U-pick and $45 per flat for pre-picked berries.

Young families bent over the rows, children pushed babies in strollers nearby, and customers hauled full buckets to the tidy white stand and paid for the berries.

Everyone was smiling.

“We’re so happy that people are loving our berries,” Heather told me.

“What inspired this venture?” I asked.

“We grow grass seed and hazelnuts,” Preston replied, “but we were looking at ways to increase our income to help keep our kids on the farm. We had this piece of land in front of the house, and my dad suggested it first.”

The planted a few berries last year, but this is the first year it’s officially open to the public, and they planted an additional patch that will be available for picking next year.

Son Cooper, age 8, I was told, helps flush driplines, and he and Hailey, age 4, helped with planting. Two-year-old Harper is the social butterfly, says her mother. She walks around with pint containers that she fills with berries and hands out to people in the patch.

Heather came up with the name, Hazelwood Berries, painted neatly on the farm stand and giving a nod to the family’s hazelnut orchards. “First I thought Hazelwood would be a good name for the orchard, but it was a little too cute. But it worked for the berry patch.”

“It’s going really well so far,” Preston said. “We’ve had a pretty good balance of people and supply. Most of our customers are local — probably 80% are people we know, or know of. We started small, but we’ll expand if the demand is there. So far we haven’t publicized beyond social media.”

I commented on the healthy plants and lack of weeds. A black plastic barrier under the plants is the main weed control, and it keeps the berries from getting muddy, I was told. In addition, they do a bit of spraying between the rows with a backpack sprayer.

“We probably baby them a little too much,” Preston chuckled. He also recognized, with a farmer’s realism, that they are completely reliant on the weather. “No matter how much work you put into it, if you get rain at the wrong time, it changes everything. We’ve been really fortunate with the weather this year.”

As individuals and families hauled bright buckets of berries to the stand, paid for them, and poured them carefully into their own containers, conversations slowed the process as we caught up with neighborhood and family news. Children clustered around a baby in a stroller as more neighbors arrived and were handed buckets and directed to the right row.

Who could have predicted that meeting a need for income on the farm and fresh produce in the community would become something much more, a place for neighbors to gather and reconnect and a positive project for families to do together?

“It’s fun to have something people enjoy,” Preston said, looking out at the berry field, mounded and green in the sunshine, and all the bent figures, busily picking.