Cherry Picking in Leona Valley

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Cherries
Gather round the campfire young entrepreneurs n’ alike, and allow me to tell you about a get-rich-quick scheme so simple.

Buy a farm.
Grow cherries in farm.
Place advertisement on newspaper about your cherry farm.
Wait for customers to arrive in the truckloads.
Get your customers to pick their own cherries and give them the honor of purchasing them at roughly 200% premium over the market price.

Oh so simple. You don’t even need to hire undocumented workers to work on your field because your foolish customers are doing it for you. So basically, the foolish costumers are picking their own cherries and paying a premium for them. What a scheme!
Anyways…, I must confess that I was one of the “foolish” customers that visited the cherry farm.
Cherry shed
After a bit of a drive we finally arrived to a cherry farm in Leona Valley, Ca. (near Lancaster, Ca)
Cherry bucket
We were given these bright red buckets to fill until our hearts content.
Cherry picking
So fresh. Well, they must be since it’s fresh off the trees.
Cherry
As we all know, darker cherries taste the best. Well…the bright colored cherries are good too, if you like sour fruit.
Cherry Tree
Some trees were hardly touched.

While some are cleaned to its roots.
The thing is you can “sample” them. Is it allowed? And what qualifies as sampling? 3? or 281? Either way, its not like anyone is watching you while you pick the cherries right?
It’s fine since they make it back by charging you $3/lb while the market price is $1/lb. They get you on the fact that you probably drove a hour from LA to get there and that you picked the cherries yourself thus more valuable somehow.
Horses
Being a farm, there are some of these.
Tractor
And what I can only make out as a cherry torturing device?

Tagged as: California, Cherry, Farm, Fruit, Leona Valley, Picking

Lisa Mello

What you don't see that goes into this is the cost of insuring the business. Stupid people come in droves and climb trees and fall and they have to be able to cover other peoples tendency to this. While climbing they break limbs injuring trees. I have lived across the street from an orchard and have witnessed people handing bags of cherries over the fence to waiting family members with out paying for them. Sad. The other is the cost of taking care of trees. You see an orchard full of fruit but not the repair of trees broken by pickers, the running of wind machines to prevent frost, watering, propane cannons to scare off the birds, and keeping the grounds around the trees. These family owned businesses are there for your enjoyment and experience. Grocery store cherries tend to not have the same sugar content as those in U-Pick places as they need to be picked earlier so they don't turn to mush quickly. Cherry season in Leona Valley is the only time I eat cherries and am willing to support the small family farmer in this Wal-Mart crazed world.
Ellie (Almost Bourdain)

Gorgeous photos and how I love cherry plucking! Can't wait for cherry season in Sydney.
Dave

If you visit one of these farms, you're probably not trying to get a great deal. Well...unless you eat all the cherries you can and leave without buying anything (since they don't charge admission here) then ya... That's a bit cruel, since they did put in a lot effort to grow them.

I must say $10/hr is quite expensive by any means but that's only because it's free here.
Protocol Snow

When I traveled in Hokkaido, Japan a few years ago, I visited a cherry farm. They charged about $10 an hour for you to run around in their farm and eat all the cherries you want, spitting the seeds right on the ground. I doubt I ate more than 2 pounds of cherries so it's not exactly a value proposition, but it was a fun experience. The quality of the fruit was exceptional though.

Cherry Picking in Leona Valley

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