How to Pick Strawberries at a U-Pick

Every year thousands of town and city dwellers flock to the strawberry fields to enjoy the taste of a ripe berry plucked from the plant with their own hands.

And every year these rookie u-pickers need explicit instructions with constant reminders.

Picking strawberries can’t be that difficult, can it?

And yet, without proper training, the whole system would fall apart in a hurry.

Strawberry farmers and u-pick operators know full well that people need training before they can be let loose into the fields.

And these farmers know full well that they must have staff on hand to oversee and remind visitors to follow the picking protocols.

If u-pick operators can accept that strawberry pickers require training, why is it so hard to accept that people looking after kids need training? Aren’t children more important that strawberries?

I’ve planted and maintained small strawberry plots with up to 1000 plants at a time over the past 15 years. I’m not a rookie picker.

I understand that if a strawberry is ripe, but isn’t picked, it will rot.

Rotten berries left on the plant will cause the berries around it to over-ripen and rot.

A field can go to waste in a hurry if the ripe strawberries are not picked.

Without instructions, people will do what seems natural. They will walk into the field, disregarding the rows, and they will meander around looking for the biggest and best-looking berries. A few from one row, a few from another. This means that plenty of ripe berries will be missed, creating a patchy field at risk of rot setting in and destroying the viability of berries that are ripe and those that are on their way to being ready.

To avoid this from happening, u-pick operators greet the pickers as they arrive at the field. The pickers are guided to a row and given instructions:

🍓 Start at the flag.
🍓 Work your way to the end of the row.
🍓 Pick strawberries from the plants on your left and right as you work your way to the end of the row.
🍓 When you are finished, move the flag to where you stopped, so we know where to send the next pickers.

I asked my young teenager to pick berries for me this season. Boy was she annoyed when rookie pickers started to meander into her row, picking the biggest and best before she had a chance to get to them.

And what teenager feels empowered to tell an adult to get out of her row and follow the rules?

U-pick operators are tasked with politely reminding pickers to follow the instructions they were given.

Because if they don’t, it is highly likely that a) other pickers will be annoyed and frustrated and b) berries will be missed, turn to rot and cause a loss of berries. Bad news for the farmer and for the next round of u-pickers.

It’s a reminder that people will be people. They aren’t malicious. They aren’t stupid. They’re just people being people.

Strawberry growers and u-pick operators get it. And so their staff provide instructions and training to their customers.

Not following these rules can ruin strawberries.

When we allow children to be cared for by people who are not trained, we can absolutely expect that there will be injuries to children.

We already know that 34% of children are sexually abused by age 18. Untrained adults don’t know how to protect children. They don’t know what to look for, and they don’t know how to respond to disclosures, discovery, or suspicion.

Farmers can put a cash value on the losses they will experience if they don’t train pickers to follow the rules.

We can put a cash value on the cost of child abuse in Canada. It’s costing us $15 billion per year. Minimum.

Farmers can lose thousands, tens of thousands or more if u-picks aren’t managed well.

What a waste.

We are wasting $15 billion dollars a year by allowing children to be abused. Training adults is a simple solution.

When will we accept that people need training, and we need oversight? Someone has to remind us to follow the rules, or children will get hurt.

Just a few days ago I heard from a parent who was talking about their children’s summer sport team. The team coach is a bit of a dud, not showing up to practices or games.

So, the assistant coach looked over at the bleachers and saw a familiar face and said, ‘hey, will you come and help us out?’

And so this person became a coach. No screening. No background checks. No code of conduct. No training.

Adults make decisions like this all the time. Thinking that we are doing the best for our kids. Giving children an opportunity that they wouldn’t have if we didn’t ‘step up and help out’.

But are we really helping? Walking around picking the best berries can cause a whole field to go to rot.

Randomly placing adults in positions of authority without providing any training is costing us $15 billion dollars per year.

But forget about money. If there is one thing I’ve learned in my advocacy work, it’s that saving money does not motivate people to protect children.

What motivates you to keep kids safe? What makes you want to see adults put best practices in place? Why do you want adults to be trained to protect children from sexual abuse?

For me, it’s a matter of waste. I love efficiency. And there is nothing efficient about putting children through the horror of sexual abuse. There is nothing efficient about families, communities and cultures struggling to overcome the effects of abuse.

Cancer, suicide, PTSD, mental health challenges, poverty, houselessness… all of these problems are a waste of time.

We could be experiencing joy. We could be supporting and encouraging creativity. We could be happy.

I want to know what motivates you to keep kids safe so we can find a way to motivate the rest of our community.

Let me know why you think that training adults to protect children is worth our time, and what will you do to encourage other adults to join us in our effort to eradicate childhood sexual abuse?

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