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September is here! Within a week the schools will be back, children kitted out in new school uniforms and exhausted parents celebrating wildly. And for the first time ever we’ve still got strawberries to pick as the summer holidays end. What a long season it's been! In this post I’ll have a look back at how our first summer growing indoor strawberries has gone...
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After over a year of planning, designing, digging, building and writing we opened our first polytunnel of indoor strawberries on 22nd June 2019. The northern climate (and our inexperience) meant the first fruit was a few weeks later than expected, but this just ensured there was even more pent up enthusiasm for picking. Inside an hour on that first morning, wave after wave of eager pick-your-owners had completely picked out a tunnel full of strawberries: 200kg of fruit!
The Hodgkins family were the first to pick from our new tunnels - they arrived an hour before we opened to be first in line!
Over the following weeks we canvassed opinions from hundreds of customers, new and old, to find out whether our new venture was a hit. There’s an undeniable charm to picking strawberries in outdoor fields (and we did a lot of that this summer too) so we hoped that visitors wouldn't find the polytunnels too modern or feel unnatural. We needn't have worried. We heard repeated rave reviews about the size, quality, and most important of all, the taste of the fruit and the sight of baskets brimming full of immaculate strawberries pouring out of the tunnels proved this point.
Half way through the summer I filmed a quick video from inside a tunnel to explain why they’d become such a hit:
Half way through the summer I filmed a quick video from inside a tunnel to explain why they’d become such a hit:
This year we grew strawberries inside four polytunnels. By staggering the date we planted the bushes in each one we could stagger the date the fruit was ripe. Just like a chicken's egg will hatch 21 days after laying, in the right conditions a strawberry plant will produce ripe fruit 60 days after planting. In this way, we were able to have continuity of strawberries right through from that first pick on 22nd June to today, 1st September. And it actually looks like we might still have a few to pick for another week. If so, that will be 11 long, glorious weeks of strawberries. A tad better than last year's 2 week season!
Even with 4 x 100m tunnels to pick from, the total amount of indoor strawberries here is still only 10% of the outdoor patches, and so the tunnels get picked out 10x faster. This has meant that during this 11 week season, we’ve opened the tunnels just twice a week - usually a weekend day then a week day - to allow the fruit to ripen between pickings. Even after restricting the openings like this, more often than not the tunnels have been picked out and closed by lunch-time on those days they're open. Demand has definitely out-stripped supply!
Such intermittent availability isn't ideal for folks trying to plan a visit too far in advance, but it's pleasing to see how understanding the vast majority of you have been as together we all get used to how our indoor strawberries behave - thank you! The ability to update our website with real-time availability has been a big help, and most customers are now getting used to checking it before setting off.
Even with 4 x 100m tunnels to pick from, the total amount of indoor strawberries here is still only 10% of the outdoor patches, and so the tunnels get picked out 10x faster. This has meant that during this 11 week season, we’ve opened the tunnels just twice a week - usually a weekend day then a week day - to allow the fruit to ripen between pickings. Even after restricting the openings like this, more often than not the tunnels have been picked out and closed by lunch-time on those days they're open. Demand has definitely out-stripped supply!
Such intermittent availability isn't ideal for folks trying to plan a visit too far in advance, but it's pleasing to see how understanding the vast majority of you have been as together we all get used to how our indoor strawberries behave - thank you! The ability to update our website with real-time availability has been a big help, and most customers are now getting used to checking it before setting off.
Our tunnel looks space-age from above and delicious from the inside!
I hope you had chance to visit the indoor strawberries this summer and they helped bring some healthy farming fun to your summer holidays! After a successful opening season, we’re looking to do more of the same next year - plans for more strawberry tunnels are already in progress, which will help improve the intermittent availability we’ve experienced this year. What's more, we're growing 50% more raspberries for next year too!
If you didn't make it this year, at least you'll know for next year: you've the whole length of the summer holidays to experience the joys of picking your own strawberries! In the meantime, with the busy summer season drawing to a close and a calmness descending on the Farm Shop and Cafe, I hope to see some of you down here for a quiet brew in the near future.
James Bulmer, 1st September 2019
If you didn't make it this year, at least you'll know for next year: you've the whole length of the summer holidays to experience the joys of picking your own strawberries! In the meantime, with the busy summer season drawing to a close and a calmness descending on the Farm Shop and Cafe, I hope to see some of you down here for a quiet brew in the near future.
James Bulmer, 1st September 2019