Virginia's Wegmeyer Farms is social distancing and picking strawberries

Agritourism destinations are normally packed with people this time of year, especially for those offering pickable strawberries.

Wegmeyer Farms in Hamilton, Virginia is adapting to the new way of doing things. They had to implement reservations to come and pick, a hand washing station before you enter the fields and even no contact when it comes to purchasing.

According to Harriet Wegmeyer, “Saturday morning, end of May, our parking lot would be full and there would be a line down our road of people waiting to get in...We knew that was not going to pass muster with social distancing and CDC recommendations.”

They also do you-pick pumpkins in the fall. Between a hard freeze in late spring and the coronavirus, 2020 looks quite different. However, giving up or not having a season was never an option. The Wegmeyers say that the Mother’s Day freeze did some damage to their strawberries but they were lucky. Other farms in northern Virginia lost almost all of their crop.

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