U-Pick Season Picking Your Own Produce Is Fun And Economical

They bent over, their multicolored backs saluting the sky in a seasonal ritual familiar to Green Bluff.

They plucked boxes of strawberries and paid for the privilege. It’s U-pick season again, and strawberries are the first crop off the vine.

Phyllis Vandehaar, who lives in Denver, was visiting her friend Geri Laughlin in the Spokane Valley. On a sunny day last week, they wore matching pink sun hats and picked almost 17 pounds of berries at Siemer’s Pick & Pack.

“This is marvelous,” Vandehaar said. “I used to do this as a kid for money. Now I’m doing it for fun.”

About 20 Green Bluff growers annually open their orchards and fields to customers. The 600 acres of fruit and vegetables are 20 miles north of Spokane.

The first crop up for grabs is the strawberry, and five of the U-pick fields offer it - Siemer’s, Edburg’s Orchard, Gibson’s Orchard and Cider Mill, McGlade’s Treemendous Fruit and Green Bluff High Country Orchards.

Pickers “can select the fruit on an individual basis,” said Jerome Rauen, who owns Green Bluff High Country Orchards with his wife, Donna Herak. “They can get the ripest, the size they desire. It allows them to be picky.”

The people who take the U-pick route for produce instead of their local supermarket have many of the same reasons for their choice.

At about 75 cents a pound, the strawberries are a bargain compared to store-bought fruit, which runs between 99 cents and $1.25 a pound when it’s on sale.

Many pickers and growers say the field fruit is better and sweeter.

“The berries are always better than in the store,” said Patricia M. Gilstrap, who made her second trip of the season to the strawberry fields last week. “The flavor - you can’t beat it.”

Donna Siemers, who owns Siemer’s Pick & Pack with her husband, said Green Bluff berries have the best flavor around. Many are raised organically.

“The berries are raised without irrigation out here,” Siemers said. “That does make a difference in the flavor. Even the peaches are sweeter and the apples.”

In the fields, U-pickers can grab their choice of fruit and often get free samples.

“I think they would have a little problem if you were in Safeway and decided to sample one of the apples,” said Eileen Smith, who with husband Darrell runs Smith’s Hilltop Orchard U-Pick. “They’d frown on that.”

U-pickers also say picking is a family event and a fun outing.

Amy Miller came to pick strawberries with two friends and six children. They all piled into a single van.

“It reminds us of the the days of growing up,” said Miller, who grew up in Dixon, Ill., birthplace of Ronald Reagan. “We were all raised on farms.”

Besides the berries, Miller comes to the U-pick fields for peaches, apples and pumpkins.

It’s now moving toward the tail end of strawberry season. After strawberries bloom, the fields offer up cherries, raspberries, apricots, apples, peaches and nectarines and a bushel of vegetables.

Most growers said this year’s crops look good, with the exception of most apricot fields and some cherries. During the sporadic weather, many cherries flourished but some floundered, splitting open. During hard rains and warm weather, ripening cherries can suck up so much moisture that they rip their skins. The fruit’s less tasty.

The late season’s cold also stunted many apricots.

“I would say we got froze out,” Rauen said. “We just didn’t have a lot of blossoms, hardly any fruit at all. The cherries will be real good though.”

Cherry picking usually starts around July 4. The annual Cherry Festival will be July 15 and 16, and the Cherry Pickers’ Trot and Pit Spitting Contest will be July 20.

For some people though, strawberries are tops.

Virginia and Bill Schmidt picked for 1 hours one day last week, nabbing 35 pounds of strawberries for $26.25. Last year the couple overpicked, taking home 102 pounds of strawberries.

Like other U-pickers, they freeze them. They use them for strawberry shortcake. They make jam.

“It’s much more fun to come out and pick them than go to the store,” said Virginia Schmidt, cradling a carton of strawberries. “As long as I’m able, I’ll come out.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

MEMO: Two sidebars appeared with the story: 1. Green Bluff’s U-pick growers Here are names, addresses, telephone numbers and crops grown by U-pick growers in Green Bluff: Anderson’s Acres, 17715 N. Day Mount Spokane Road, 238-6760 - Cherries, apples, prunes, pumpkins, squash, corn. Beck’s Harvest House and Orchard, corner of Greenbluff and Day-Mount Spokane roads, 238-6970 - Cherries, peaches, prunes, plums, apricots, apples. Bowker’s Orchard and Cider, 8814 E. Greenbluff Road, 238-6971 - Cherries, peaches, late apples. Carmichael’s Green Bluff Garden, just west of the corner of Day-Mount Spokane and Greenbluff roads, 238-4128 - Pie cherries, carrots, beans, pumpkins, beets, pickling cucumbers. Edburg’s Orchard, 1/4-mile east of intersection of Day-Mount Spokane and Greenbluff roads, 238-4271 - Strawberries, cherries, peaches, apricots, raspberries, blueberries, apples. Gibson’s Orchard and Cider Mill 19405 N. Sands Road, 238-4874 - Strawberries, cherries, apricots, plums, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, apples. Granny’s Orchard, near intersection of Sands and DayMount Spokane roads, 238-4991 - Cherries, apricots, peaches. Green Bluff High Country Orchards, 8518 E. Greenbluff Road, 238-4963 - Strawberries, raspberries, cherries, apricots, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash. Hansen’s Orchard, 8215 E. Greenbluff Road, 238-4902 - Peaches, apples, tomatoes, squash, carrots, beets. Huckaba Orchards, 8022 E. Greenbluff Road, 238-6742 - Cherries. McGlade’s Tree-mendous Fruit, near corner of Day-Mount Spokane and Yale roads, 467-8340 - Strawberries, raspberries, green beans, pickling cucumbers, pumpkins. Siemer’s Pick & Pack, corner of Sands and Day-Mount Spokane roads, 238-6242 - Strawberries, cherries, peaches. Smith’s Hilltop Orchard U-Pick, 9423 E. Greenbluff Road, 238-4647 - Cherries, peaches, apples. Thorson’s Perfection Fruit, 17007 N. Sands Road, 238-6438 - Cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, apples, grapes. Walter’s Fruit Ranch, near intersection of Day and Dunn roads, 238-4709 - Cherries, peaches, apricots, nectarines, apples. Wellens’ Luscious Fruit and Antiques, near corner of Day and Sands roads, 238-6978 - Cherries, peaches, nectarines, apples, pears, walnuts. Wicklund’s Apple Lane, 17425 N. Sands Road, 238-4294 - Cherries, apricots, peaches, prunes, apples, pumpkins, squash. Yost’s Farmhouse Orchard on the Bluff, 17611 N. Sands Road, 238-4569 - Cherries, apples, peaches. Kim Barker

2. Produce harvest-ready at different times Get out your baskets. There’s a long season of picking ahead. Here’s when different fruits and vegetables are ready to eat: Strawberries: Mid-June through mid-July. Cherries: Mid-July through mid-August. Raspberries: Mid-July through mid-August. Apricots: Late July through August. Apples: August through winter. Cucumbers: August and September. Peaches and nectarines: First part of August through mid-September. Corn: Mid-August through mid-September. Prunes and plums: Mid-August through early October. Carrots: Late August through winter. Pears: September through winter. Cabbage: September through winter. Potatoes: September through winter. Grapes: Early September through mid-October. Pumpkins and squash: Late September through early winter. Kim Barker