Where to pick your own strawberries, blueberries, cherries and more throughout the growing season
This is an outstanding strawberry season. This spring’s heavier than usual rainfall has been great for the berries. Recent hot, sunny weather has ripened berries to a sweeter than usual, larger than usual, more abundant than usual degree. All indications point to this being true for blueberries, raspberries and blackberries as well. If you are the sort of cook who likes to can or freeze berries, this is your year to pick exactly what you want, and as much of it as you like. Alternatively, if you’ve always dreamed of taking your family berry-picking in large sun hats, this is also your year.
There are several good reasons to pick your own fruit and vegetables, but two stand out:
Variety Most of the varieties of produce in supermarkets are chosen for how well they travel and how long they will stay fresh. Flavor is much less important; after all, they won’t be able to sell bruised or overripe fruit. Local pick-your-own (PYO) farms don’t have to worry about shipping their crops across the country, so they can grow varieties that are especially delicious or delicate.
Freshness By picking your own fruit, you can have little doubt about how fresh it is.
Looking to pick your own strawberries (now) and apples (later)? These farms were Hippo readers top recommendations according to votes in this year’s Best Of survey.
Sunnycrest Farm
59 High Range Road, Londonderry, 432-9652, sunnycrestfarmnh.com
Currently, strawberries and cherries are every day from 7a.m. to 1 p.m. There are also strawberries and cherries in the farm market. Ice cream is available daily, from noon to 9 p.m. Farm market hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. The market has fresh baked goods and local veggies, milk and honey, jams and syrup, and lots of New Hampshire-made products and locally crafted items. Call the hotline 603-432-9652 for any updated information. To speak to someone call the office number, 603-432-7753.
Daniel Hicks IV is a fourth-generation farmer and the owner of Sunnycrest Farm in Londonderry. He said that barring unforeseen circumstances there will be PYO fruit available from now through the fall.
“Farming is a guessing game at best,” he said, “but strawberries are coming in now. Usually for the first week of July we have our blueberries and cherries. And then probably around the middle of July we will have our summer raspberries. Then in August we have our peaches, plums and apricots.”
Apples can start in late August, with pumpkins in September, according to the website.
Hicks said that although it might be a surprise to some of his customers, stone fruits grow well in New Hampshire.
“We’ve always grown stone fruit here,” he said. “My farm has been around since 1943, and I think we’ve grown peaches since the 1980s. It’s on and off because the stone fruit is such a sensitive crop — all it takes is one cold night in May to wipe out a whole crop. We’ve been lucky this year, though. We only had one frosty night we had to handle. We have a beautiful crop and the weather stayed warm when we wanted it to.”
Hicks personally looks forward to cherry season.
“I am the biggest cherry fan,” he said. “I adore cherries. Over the last seven years I’ve planted a bunch of newer varieties of cherries. I would say 80 percent sweet, 20 percent sour is what I have. And yeah, that’s my favorite on a personal level.”
Mack’s Apples
230 Mammoth Road, Londonderry, 432-3456, macksapples.com
Open Tuesday through Sunday, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Strawberries and raspberries are available for picking now. Peaches and sunflowers will be available in August. Apples, pears, and pumpkins will be available from late August through Nov. 1. Mack’s sells ice cream topped with the farm’s own strawberries. Call the Mack’s hotline anytime for the latest picking conditions and to find out what varieties are ready, or follow Mack’s on Facebook and Instagram.
Christine Dresser is the PYO manager at Mack’s Apples. She’s excited about the farm’s new crop of raspberries.
“We’re doing strawberries right now,” she said. “And when strawberries are finished, we’ll be picking raspberries this year. That’s new for us. It’s our very first year for raspberries. We have some earlier peaches this year, too. Usually we start picking the peaches sometime in the middle of August but hopefully if all goes well we’ll be picking a new variety that will come out [at] the end of July. So we’ll be picking those and then we’ll go to the variety that we have been picking in the past. We’ve always had six varieties of peaches, but now we have a bunch of new trees coming in, so there’ll be more. This one variety is a little bit earlier than our other varieties, so hopefully we’ll be able to go soon after raspberries into the early peaches, and then into the peaches that we had right along. And then, while we’re finishing up peaches, we start with some of the summer apples, the earlier apples.”
While many customers remember to dress for warm conditions, Dresser said chilly weather often takes them by surprise.
“It’s usually windy at an orchard,” she said. “If it’s windy at your house, it will be windier here, because orchards tend to be on the tops of hills. I’m not sure why.”
Brookdale Fruit Farm
41 Broad St. in Hollis, 465-2240, brookdalefruitfarm.com
Cherries are currently available to be picked.Through the rest of the growing season blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries, blackberries, apples, pumpkins and late raspberries will be available. Visit brookdalefruitfarm.com/pickyourown or call the Brookdale Farm Hotline at 465-2240 for daily picking conditions. A farm stand is open daily, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Zoey Stapp is a manager at Brookdale Fruit Farm. Her staff is preparing for a busy summer.
“It depends on the season, obviously,” she said, “and the weather and sports schedules and stuff, but on a good day we’ll have a couple hundred cars a day, at least, if not more. There will probably be at least 600 cars a day for apples. We’re quite a popular pick-your-own destination.”
Stapp confirmed that this is an unusually good year for strawberries.
“The strawberries are excellent,” she said. “They have great size on them, and really nice flavor. We’re just hoping we get some sun to kind of help ripen the berries.”
Stapp said one of the best times for PYO is in the middle of the week.
“Tuesday and Wednesday tend to be the quietest days,” she said. “So if you’re looking for a quiet excursion with easy-to-pick fruit, usually the fruit has had a chance to ripen from the weekend by Tuesday. Wednesday’s usually peak picking, I feel like you haven’t quite gotten the weekend crowds yet. But that being said, we have plenty of room. So even if it is a busy weekend day, the parking lot may look busy, but once you get out there you feel like you’re out by yourself. There’s not too many crowds, which is excellent. And there’s plenty of space for everyone to spread out and enjoy themselves.”
Lull Farm
93 Spaulding St., Milford, 465-7079, livefreeandfarm.com
See Lull Farm’s social media for updates.
Carter Hill Orchard
73 Carter Hill Road, Concord, 225-2625, carterhillapples.com
Blueberries will be available for PYO after July 4. Peaches will be available in August, and apples throughout the fall. Call for daily picking conditions.
Todd Larocque from Carter Hill Orchard and his staff are gearing up for blueberry picking, which, for Carter Hill, begins this weekend.
“We start [our season] with blueberries after the Fourth of July,” he said, “and then peaches in August and apples in the fall. The blueberries are looking really good. They’ve got some nice size to them, as well as the peaches and apples right now. It’s been a really wet spring.”
McQuesten Farm
330 Charles Bancroft Hwy., Litchfield, 424-9268, find them on Facebook
Strawberries are in season now. Later in the season, tomatoes, peppers, beets, carrots, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, green beans, yellow beans, shell beans, romano flat beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, spinach, radishes and winter squash will be available. Call for daily conditions.
Like many PYO farms, McQuesten Farm has started its season with strawberries, said managing partner Christie McQuesten.
“Then in the summertime, we will open our fields and it’s never the same time every year because the growing season is always different. But we open our fields and people can pick their own just about everything we grow. They can pick tomatoes, peppers, sweet, bell, hot, doesn’t matter, beets, carrots, summer squash, zucchini, cucumbers, pickling cuke, green beans, yellow beans, shell beans, romano flat beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, spinach, radishes, winter squash, and then in the fall we have hay rides to the pumpkin field and they can pick their own pumpkins. We have all kinds of pumpkins too.”
Unlike most area PYO farms, other than strawberries, which are in season now, McQuesten Farm will not open for customers to pick fruit and vegetables until later in the summer, when most of its plants will be ready for picking at the same time.
“When our field’s open — usually it’s about the third week in August, but … the weather will determine that — it will be open for just about everything that you’re allowed to pick, with very few exceptions,” McQuesten said,
McQuesten said one of the most popular aspects of the farm with PYO customers is the farm animals.
“So we have animals that people can feed,” she said. “You cannot go inside with them, but we sell ice cream cones filled with grain that people can feed. We have lots of goats. We have a horse; they cannot feed him but they can see him. We have a Scottish Highland cow. We have guinea hens, we have ducks, we have geese, we have turkeys, and we have rabbits. The only farm animals we don’t have that a farm would typically have is a donkey and a pig, well, because they’re very loud.”
Apple Hill Farm
580 Mountain Road, Concord, 224-8862, applehillfarmnh.com
Strawberries are currently available for PYO at 89 Hoit Road, Monday through Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to noon. Check back later in the season for blueberries, raspberries, black currants and apples.
Diane Souther of Apple Hill Farm said this year’s blueberries look amazing.
“They’re looking phenomenal this year,” she said. “It’s unbelievable how big they are for this time of year. I’ve been hearing that that’s a good year for the berries, especially the blueberries.” Also looking good are the grapes. “We have seedless table grapes,” she added. “They’ll start in the middle of August at some point. And then apples start early September.”
“There was some worry with all the rain, that the pollinators, you know, might not get the job done,” Souther said. “But it’s funny — I was mowing grass last night and I left one whole section that had white pollen on it and it was just loaded with bees. I mean even though it’s wet they have to eat too, so as soon as they come out, they come out.”
Souther said freshness is the main appeal for PYO customers.
“I think they’re looking for freshness,” she said. “They’re looking for an experience, some of them, and some just value the fresh berries because they’re much better than store-bought ones. There’s not going to be any middleman. They pick it now and they eat it tonight.”
J&F Farms
108 Chester Road, Derry, 437-0535, jandffarmsnh.com
In addition to PYO, there is a farm store that sells local products as well as produce from the farm. There is also a petting farm.
Melissa Dolloff from J&F Farms said J&F’s PYO business is split between two crops: “We’re hoping to have pick-your-own strawberries in the next week or so, but we’re just waiting for some sunshine so we can get them to ripen a little bit more. And then in the fall we will have pick-your-own pumpkins. And that’s pretty much it.”
But in the meantime, there are animals.
“We have a petting farm that’s open every day, seven days a week with our farm stand,” Dolloff said. “We have sheep, goats, cows, we have a donkey, a pig and it’s open every day that the farm stand is open. So seven days a week.” She said that the animals are super-popular with kids, especially the farm’s horse or goats.
“It kind of depends on the kids,” she said. “Some kids also really like the cows, too. But … we have a horse that’s very friendly; she’s always sticking her head out for attention, so she kind of captures everybody’s attention too. They all have their own little personalities.”
Berry Good Farm
234 Parker Road, Goffstown, 497-1327, berrygoodfarmnh.com
Open Wednesday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Berry Good Farm specializes in one thing: blueberries.
“We are strictly right now a You-Pick blueberry farm,” said farm owner Jeff Daniels. “[The farm] is about 6 acres. We have about 4,500 bushes. So it’s pretty busy over here. Generally we are open from about Fourth of July until the second week of August.”
He said this year’s heavy rain has been great for the berries.
“It closed down our ability to get out in the field, but the berry crops look fantastic. We have four different varieties here — Blue Ray, Blue Crop, Northland and Patriot — and they all look like they’re coming through terrific. They’re all basically good to eat, right off the bush, ready to go. The Northlands are more of a baking berry and the other three varieties are kind of the larger crop, big, larger berries.”
“This is one of the few businesses that I’ve been in where generally everyone that comes here is just in a fantastic mood. Not a lot of people are out here grumpy when they’re picking blueberries. It’s just a beautiful way to spend the day.”
Applecrest Farm
133 Exeter Road, Hampton Falls, 926-3721, applecrest.com
Strawberries are currently available for PYO. Later in the season blueberries, peaches, raspberries, flowers, herbs, apples and pumpkins will be available. Call the farm’s PYO hotline at 926-3721 for daily picking conditions, or visit applecrest.com/pick-your-own.php.
Todd Wagner from Applecrest Farm is also excited about this year’s blueberry season, which he hopes will last longer than usual.
“Blueberries are the next fruit crop that we offer pick-your-own on,” he said, “and those begin typically in the first week of July and can run right into like the first or second week of September, sometimes. The next crop that we would have for pick-your-own would be peaches and those typically start up in … basically the first week of August, and those run right into mid-September. Our raspberries would be the next thing, which typically start in the first or second week of August and carry right through until the first frost in October.”
In addition to PYO, the farm keeps busy throughout the summer with different activities.
“If you just go to our website, we have our festival schedule,” Wagner said. “We just had a two-day strawberry festival, with live music and tractor rides and yard games and sampling. And obviously pick-your-own, our barnyard, all of that kind of stuff. We do that for strawberries, for blueberries, for peaches, and then obviously all fall for apples. So there’s something pretty much every weekend, but a couple of times a month anyway through the summer and then every single Saturday and Sunday through the fall.”
Devriendt Farm
178 S. Mast St., Goffstown, 497-2793, devriendtfarm.com
Strawberries are available now for PYO daily, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m at the farm’s location at 47 Story Road, Goffstown. Pumpkins will be available for PYO in the fall. Call 497-2793 for daily picking conditions.
According to Lori Beauchemin from Devriendt Farm, this year’s strawberries are exceptional. “They are really beautiful,” she said. “We’re picking now. We started a couple of weeks ago, and we just haven’t stopped. We’ve been very busy up at pick-your-own and we’re selling out here at the stand every day. So it’s been a really good season for strawberries.”
Butternut Farm
195 Meaderboro Road, Farmington, 335-4705, butternutfarm.net
Strawberries are available to pick right now, followed by raspberries, cherries, blueberries, peaches, apples and pumpkins.24-hour PYO hotline at 335-4705.
For Peggy Dana, from Butternut Farm, the best piece of advice she has for PYO enthusiasts is to call the farm before visiting.
“It’s highly, highly recommended,” she said, “especially during strawberry season, because depending upon the weather — like yesterday was a really, really nice day — we could easily get picked out by noon, in which case the beds would be closed for the rest of the afternoon. You don’t want to drive here and be disappointed. So we strongly recommend calling our hotline ahead of time, even the night before. It gets updated throughout the day.”
“We have two peacocks and we have three goats,” Dana said. “No petting, but the goats are amusing in and of themselves. We also make our own hard cider here. We always have five varieties on tap and apple cider doughnuts. We have sweet cider in the fall when we have apples in season.”
Gould Hill Farm
656 Gould Hill Road, Contoocook, 746-3811, gouldhillfarm.com
According to Gould Hill Farm’s webpage, its PYO season for blueberries starts in mid-July. The farm grows more than 15 varieties of yellow- and white-fleshed peaches, including Saturn (flat or doughnut) peaches, which will be available from early August through early September. Other stone fruits, including nectarines, plums, cherries and apricots, will be available in late July, August and early September. Pears will be available throughout August. Apple season will start around Labor Day. All produce will be available for purchase at the farm’s store.
Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp
Recipe from Apple Hill Farm
Slice and hull 1 quart of fresh strawberries (approx. 3 cups)
Cut into slices 1 cup of fresh rhubarb
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 to 2 teaspoons cinnamon
butter (3/4-1 stick) softened
Preheat oven to 350°F. Slice up the strawberries and rhubarb and place in 9×9” casserole dish (or 9-inch deep dish pie plate). Sprinkle granulated sugar over top and lightly stir in. Mix flour, dark brown sugar, cinnamon and butter together and spread over the mixture. Bake uncovered at 350°F for approx. 45 mins to 1 hour or till bubbly. Serve warm topped with vanilla ice cream.
(Or you could do with 3 1/2 cups blueberries for a blueberry crisp but add 1/2 cup of flour
stirred in on top with the 2/3 cup granulated sugar before placing the crisp topping on.)
Even better warmed up the second day.
