Supplier visit to Manor Farm Fruits & Lower Reule Farm
Our fresh buyer Matt went to visit a couple of our local strawberry farms today.
We first visited Manor Farms.
Manor Farm Fruits is situated in the picturesque village of Hints in Staffordshire. The farm has been owned and run by the Clarke family for the last three generations and is one of Staffordshire’s longest established soft fruit growers.
With a total of 130 acre farm – 55 acres of soft fruit, we have 17 acres of strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and blackberries designated specifically for ‘Pick-Your-Own’ during the summer months as well as selling ready picked blueberries and rhubarb.
They pride themselves in growing fruit of the highest quality and grow a wide range of varieties of both strawberries and raspberries offering subtle differences in both flavour and appearance.
Additionally, we now grow thousands of pumpkins, squashes and gourds for our annual Pumpkin Fest in October which has now been running for the last six years.
The strawberry tunnels grow on the side of a hill which allows all the heat to rise up out of the tunnel at the top. All the strawberries grow in bags filled with Coconut husk from Sri Lanka. These are watered anywhere from 4-8 times a day depending on the weather conditions.
We then visited Lower Reule Farm.
Founded more than 40 years ago, Ian & Carol Critchley established the fruit growing enterprise at Lower Reule Farm in 1976 .
By 1982 they were growing over 200 acres of strawberries, all in open fields and harvested over the four weeks on June. If it rained the whole crop could be lost – for this reason strawberries were historically considered very much a luxury food.
In the late 1990’s the farm trialled the use of polytunnels. Growing fruit under tunnels not only protected the crop from the rain, combined with the use of new everbearer strawberry varieties the season was extended. It was now possible to harvest crops in Staffordshire from mid-May to October.
In 2009 faced with a shortage of harvest workers, they decided to grow all of their strawberries on table tops. This meant that strawberries would be grown out of the soil without the need to bend down to the ground to pick them. After 8 years converting all of their production areas, they picked their last soil grown strawberries in 2016.
2016 also saw the opening of our new 20,000 square foot cooling and packing facility. We now have the very best rapid chilling and cooling systems available, two bespoke packing lines all housed in a super compliant food safe environment.
Today owned by Charles Kidson and his family, they continue to produce strawberries to the very highest standards both in terms of quality and food safety. Through the use of tunnels and table tops.
The first thing we noticed was the yellow sheeting over the strawberry tunnels. We asked Charles the owner and manager who took us round and se said its to prevent a pest called the Western flower thrip.
The sheeting stops uv light which prevents the pest from navigating through the yellow haze light. The yellow sheet projects through this light throughout the tunnel and it keeps them out.
There are 800km of bedding to be covered in the tunnelling as both sides of the bed need picking.
Above right the red trays used to pick the strawberries, each with slits in the side walls of the trays to allow air to pass through when being blast chilled. See below the blast chiller that brings the core temperature of the product down very quickly and extends the shelf life of the berry an additional 24 hours.
Below are small cuttings that have now taken root. The small plants are all planted by hand on the ground bad monitored for the rest of the year. These plants are watered and grown for the rest of the year before the first frost hits. These plants are then quickly frozen to -2 degrees where they remain in hibernation until the next year. This is next year’s crop so great care I taken to look after these plants.
