U-Pick Farms and Farm Markets: COVID-19 Resources from Penn State Extension

After a chilly spring and being indoors due to COVID-19, customers are ready to get out and support local agriculture. In some locations, strawberries are in short supply due to frost and freeze damage, which may make meeting the demand especially challenging.

Growers are understandably looking for information on how to best prepare. Penn State Extension has a very useful web site - Coronavirus: Information and Resources for the Extension Community - that was just updated. The update makes it easier to find information, and new articles are being added all the time.

To find info, you can either start at the Penn State Extension homepage and click the golden-yellow banner at the top, or go directly to Coronavirus / COVID-19 Information and bookmark the site. You can then click one of the four buttons of interest – note that one gets you to some key "Recursos en Espanol" by clicking one button.

Once you get to the main page, you can also just scroll down to "Resources by Topic", where you'll find subject areas of interest – those consist of "Protecting Yourself from COVID-19", "Personal and Family Resources", "Farm Markets, Farmers Market, You-Pick, and Produce Auction Resources", "Agriculture Industry Resources", "Business and Financial Resources", and "Community, Non-Profit, and Local Government Resources". From there, you can get to articles – over 80 in total at last count. Some articles appear under more than one topic area.

For the topic we're discussing right now, see the article .  At the end of the article (this is also the case with other articles), there are links to other great publications such as a very complete U-pick guide from the Cornell Small Farms Program, ideas from a roundtable held by the North American Farmer's Direct Marketing Association, and a link to a publication on handwashing stations (in case you need for many people to be washing their hands at the same time) from the University of Vermont. That one, in turn, links to more plans and ideas for handwashing stations from other institutions.

Many of these publications focus on keeping you, your family, your employees, and your customers safe. Usually publicity concerning pick-your-own strawberry season is about enjoyable events and happy customers. Let's all do our part to keep it that way, this year more than any other.