PANDORA — Suter Produce Inc. strawberries are ripening a little early and Brussels sprouts will be available in Ottawa and Glandorf Saturday morning, said owner Jerry Suter.
“Six in the morning tomorrow there will be four trucks and about 30 cars by the field over there,” Suter said. “The kids will pick them, pack them in the trucks and take them into town.”
Suter’s website says the stands will open at 10 a.m. today.
They will not be offering U-pick again this year, he said. This will be the third season U-pick hasn’t been available to the community and there are two reasons why, Suter explained.
“There isn’t enough acres of berries to meet the demand,” he said. “They’re a difficult crop to expand.”
Each row of strawberries starts out as single plants spaced about a foot apart. The finished product is a massive cluster of plants stretching across the field but doing that takes a lot of time and effort, Suter explained.
Each single plant sprouts off shoot plants called daughters or runners. Employees must kneel in the field and pick each runner from where it has sprouted and replant it in specific locations between each mother plant, Suter said.
“It’s just easier and more convenient to have the college and high school kids pick (the berries) and take them to the stand,” he said.
The strawberry crops seem to be producing as much as they have other seasons, Suter said, but said they are ripening a bit earlier then normal because of the sporadic weather this spring.
Suter employs Putnam County high school and college students to help with the farm work. They’re hard working and spend their summer doing something worthwhile, Suter said.
“The students who pick the berries will meet the person who eats them,” he said. Many of the young people who work in the fields also sell the produce to customers at the Suter Produce stands. “When they’re picking them, they know a local person is going to enjoy their efforts.”
Knowing someone local is going to enjoy the product of their labor is probably why they work as hard as they do, Suter said.
“A lot of places around say they have local produce,” he said. “It doesn’t get more local than this, though.” The produce at Suter Produce Inc. is planted, tended, harvested and sold by local high schoolers and college students working their way through school, Suter said.
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