Pick your own strawberries soon!

  

  I have been checking the Larriland website to see if the warmer Spring has brought on the strawberry crop earlier this year.   They are still saying that it looks like mid to late May for the strawberries. It seems like we have fewer places to pick fruits every year.  I remember going to Dunteachin and Sewell's Orchard in earlier times.

 As a kid in Pennsylvania I remember picking strawberries as my first paying job.  We usually picked from Memorial Day to the Fourth of July.  I came to realize how tough a job it is to harvest this fruit.  Four or five hours picking in the Summer sun can be back breaking.  The other pickers and I always competed to see who could pick the most pints.  We had a "flat" that held six pints of strawberries.  We got paid 10 cents a pint and 150 to 200 pints a day was a good day's work.  The picker (mostly 13 to 15 year old guys who were too young to get a workers permit) that picked the most pints got a 5 dollar bonus.  That was a big incentive in those days.