FARMERS diary
THREE COUSINS’ STRAWBERRY PATCH BY C L AY C O P P E D G E • P H OTO G RA P H Y BY A N DY SA M S
W
hen Will and Ann Bates’ oldest granddaughter, Hallie
Hallie, now 12, gladly complied with her grandfather’s wishes.
Bates, was 9 years old and ready to enter the 4-H pro-
She grew enough berries to sell at that year’s festival with plenty
gram in Poteet, Texas, she told her grandparents she
more left over, so she opened Hallie’s Strawberry Patch to the
wanted to raise animals—pigs, specifically. Will, a longtime agri-
public as a pick-your-own operation. Pretty soon, she was putting
culture teacher in Poteet, agreed to help her, but under one con-
money away for college. “We never thought it would be that suc-
dition: she had to grow strawberries, too. “This is a strawberry
cessful,” Will says.
place,” Will explained.
Soon, Hallie’s cousins, Hannah Chandler, 13, and her sister Tess
Indeed, it is. The city’s water tower, painted to look like a
Chandler, 10, wanted in on the action. The current patch, now
strawberry, and the 7-foot-tall, 1,600-pound strawberry replica in
named Three Cousins’ Strawberry Patch to reflect the expansion,
front of the fire station offer an inkling of the town’s claim to
covers a little more than an acre. “Ann and I are the landlords and
fame. And the annual three-day Poteet Strawberry Festival brings
banker and they’re the labor—and they do a lot of it,” Will says.
100,000 people to town every April.
The strawberry season runs from late February to about the EDIBLEAUSTIN.COM
MAY/JUNE 2018
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