Even though Jim Lewerer offers both ready pick and u-pick strawberries from his Red Cedar Valley Farms, his preference is clear. He specializes in ready-pick berries, but with a difference – his staff takes the berries to the customer at six satellite sales locations.
Those berries, are popular items at the Wisconsin sales sites, two each in Eau Claire and Menomonie and one each in Hudson and Chippewa Falls. The sites attract thousands of customers from Wisconsin and from the Twin Cities of Minnesota just across the St. Croix River.
“Growers should really think about starting a ready pick operation, even if they start only one stand in their locale just to get things going,” said Lewerer. “A lot of people will buy berries rather than go out and pick. What would you do if another grower came and started selling and took your u-pick customers away? Shouldn’t you be the first one?”
Lewerer found that to be true almost immediately after purchasing the ready-pick farm from Wally Schultz in 1992. Lewerer bought six acres and planted four more and applied all 10 toward ready-pick. Schultz kept seven acres and maintained his u-pick operation. The next season, Schultz found he couldn’t sell from seven acres what he could easily sell from 12 acres the year before, largely because of Lewerer’s ready-pick stands.
Initially, the major reason Lewerer chose the ready-pick marketing system was due to geography. For the first eight years, he and his family lived 55 miles away in Stillwater, Minn., and thus could not be on the premises for the time required to run a u-pick operation. He subsequently discovered that the ready-pick system was more flexible, more profitable, less affected by weather and easier on the fields.
“The marketing end of it is really unlimited. We have two or three sales sites in reserve that we don’t have a chance to get to,” said Lewerer.
The key ingredients in the Red Cedar Valley ready-pick system are skilled people, the pails, a telephone hotline system, a field office trailer and a fleet of Chevy Suburbans.
Most of the picking crew are teens from five area high schools, with some Laotian Hmong workers helping out as well. The pickers work from 5:30 to 9:30 a.m. and are paid $1.60 a pail, which is adjusted upward if the picking is too tough and to guarantee at least the minimum wage.
One field supervisor is available for every 10 to 12 pickers. They make sure that the pails are full and the rows picked cleanly. After the morning’s harvest is complete, these supervisors then help load the vehicles, drive them to the satellite locations and then become the salespeople.
These supervisor/sales jobs are popular with college students, who can make as much money during three weeks of long days during harvest as they can during two or three months of other types of work. One family of six home-schooled children is still with the farm. The father is the overall field manager, his oldest son is a supervisor/seller, one daughter is office manager, another son runs the field aspect of the u-pick operation and the rest are still pickers.
A portable field office trailer and phone system are rented, placed at the farm site and serve as headquarters for the operation. Lewerer got the idea to use these construction site trailers from his first career with the Minnesota Department of Transportation.
“They give a tremendous amount of flexibility for any grower who is being closed in by urban situation and wants to get farther away. You can buy a 40-acre piece 15 miles from town, do a total ready pick operation and never miss a beat,” he said.
Ready-pick fruit can be purchased either at the farm or one of the six remote sales locations. Reservations are taken for pickup on the farm, where on any given day 150 to 250 pails are reserved. Customers buy from the satellite sales locations on a first-come, first-served basis.
Each pail has the Red Cedar Valley Farms logo on one side and the hotline number and name of the ready-picker on the other. Ready-pick berries cost $11 per five-quart pail, while u-pick customers are charged $7.
The hotline is set up in such a way that customers from every location can get information about availability of strawberries without having to call long distance. People who call from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in season will have their calls answered by someone at the portable trailer. After hours callers will get information on picking hours and fruit availability for the next day.
The eight Suburbans give the entire system its mobility. One truck goes to each of the six sites, while the other two are shuttles for delivering strawberries and other needed supplies. Each of the sales vehicles has a banquet table, umbrella stand, banners, signs and two shelves that can hold 75 buckets of strawberries each. The shuttle vehicles have three shelves.
Why Suburbans? Lewerer says “they’re notorious for running forever. Other than batteries and tires, I can’t think of what else goes wrong with them.” He likes to buy vehicles with Chevy V-8 350 engines with approximately 150,000 miles of use. He checks the want ads for such vehicles and usually pays $1,500 for one. Each vehicle averages 1,000 miles a month during harvest season.
U-pick customers harvest about 25% of the berries. That portion of the business began two years ago after Schultz left the area to take a college teaching job.
“I guess I’m just letting that go where it goes. I won’t turn u-pick customers away but I don’t do any heavy advertising or promoting to get them to come, either. A lot of people will choose to buy ready-picked at stands or in the field just because the economy is so good and people have money to spend. That’s one reason to have u-pick. If the economy ever turns around, I want people to know it’s still available,” Lewerer said.
Lewerer stresses that none of this would work without quality strawberries. His favorite ready-pick varieties are Jewel and Annapolis for their size, color and taste. He also grows Glooscap and Kent. He avoids Honeoye because it doesn’t keep as well at his operation despite its high yields.
The strawberries are grown in rotation with oats, rye and marigolds. The double-row plantings are on 40-inch centers at 12-inch spacing, which amounts to approximately 11,000 plants an acre. The growing regime includes soil and tissue sampling, foliar feeding and monitoring for brix levels. Lewerer is making the transition toward drip irrigation to try and avoid problems with bacterial and angular leaf spot and anthracnose.
Another change that has taken place is a move away from fumigation. As an alternative, for the last three years Lewerer reports good success using a Buddingh hoe weeder until runnering, then switching to a Danish tooth.
Lewerer grew up on a dairy farm, but had absolutely no strawberry experience before buying the farm. Before taking early retirement from his first career, he knew he wanted to do something else, but didn’t know what. He even bought a book profiling 1,001 business startup opportunities, but nothing clicked until a real estate agent asked him if he’d like to buy a strawberry farm.
After viewing a video of strawberry harvest and getting to know Schultz, the idea sounded more plausible to Lewerer. He knew his skills in working on cars and equipment would be a big help.
“Plus, I thought growing something sounded better than buying a Laundromat,” he said.
Lewerer learned from Schultz, Dell Christensen and the specialty fruit growers group Christensen heads up at Northland Community and Technical College in Detroit Lakes, Minn. He’s still a member of the group, which meets for wintertime classes.
