Local U-pick Farm Hottest Ticket in Town

BY ALEXIS GUSTIN agustin@loudounnow.com

What does a U-pick strawberry farm in western Loudoun have in common with a pop superstar?

If you are like the thousands of people trying to get weekend reservations to Wegmeyer Farms to pick your own strawberries, you’ll understand that getting those reservations have been as hard to get as tickets to the pop star Taylor Swift‘s Eras tour—even causing a website crash.

Many on social media have said getting a reservation to Wegmeyer Farms is the hottest ticket item since Taylor Swift.

“Every day is a different day in the berry field. Every day has different supply based on the weather,” owner Tyler Wegmeyer said. “Berries ripen every day so we may be completely picked out one day but if we have 75-degree temps at night and we have good sunshine, the next day it is full of red berries. It’s that quick.”

Tyler and Harriet Wegmeyer began doing a reservation system for their U-pick farm in Hamilton during the COVID-19 pandemic to help customers feel safe. They limited the number of pickers and kept them spaced out in the fields. But he said they had been toying with the idea long before COVID made it necessary.

“We thought about it for years and didn’t have the guts to do it,” he said. “To be frank with you, it was just little bit out there, no one had done reservations like that anywhere.”

On a weekday afternoon, the farm is peaceful and serene, but on the weekends, Tyler said it gets crazy. He said before the reservation system they would have a train of cars lined down the road. He said he would have to drive his four-wheeler down the line of cars and tell people they couldn’t accept any more pickers. He said it was stressful not only to have to turn customers away that were coming to get an experience in his fields but also because the road was blocked and if there was an accident no emergency vehicle could get through.

“It’s a great problem to have, right? That people want to pick our strawberries. But we also have a responsibility to make sure people are safe and there isn’t a mosh pit,” he said.

He said they knew they needed to do something.

“The reservation system has been a game changer. It’s taken our farm to the next level,” he said.

This year marks the farm’s 15th strawberry year.

The reservation system works by Tyler walking the field every night and making estimates as to how many people they can bring in the next day based on available berries. He said over the years he’s gotten pretty good at estimating the daily supply. Then they release that number of tickets or reservation slots around 6 p.m. for the next day. If you try to get weekday reservations and are on the website right at 6 p.m., to reserve a time for the next day, it‘s highly competitive, but he said if you wait just a little bit you will still get a spot and it won’t be as busy on the site. Getting a reservation to pick on the weekend is a different story and is usually highly competitive, selling out within minutes.

A reservation costs $30 and includes your first bucket of strawberries. He said most people will pick more so he estimates the slots conservatively to not release too many tickets.

He said they want people to come and have the best experience possible and have access to hundreds of ripe, juicy berries right at their fingertips rather than searching row after row.

He said the management of the field is important to him and he and his patch bosses make sure each picker gets the most out of their time there. Pickers are assigned their own row by the patch boss. It’s usually a spot that hasn’t been picked on yet that day. They are given a flag and when they pick all they want they put the flag in the spot they stop. The flag helps them know where that picker stopped and where the next picker can start.

“I love the strawberry. I’m very passionate about it. In the world there is a lot of negative out there and the strawberry field is a sanctuary, it’s about having a great time, it’s about positivity, the love of the berry and being outside in nature,” he said.

He said the four to six weeks of strawberry season is a magical time of year.

“Seventy-two degrees, sunny with a 10-mph breeze is the perfect weather for a strawberry plant. That is their optimal, they love it and we’ve had it the last few days,” he said.

Which means now is the peak time to pick.

The beautiful start to strawberry season weatherwise has kept the farm, which opened May 1, busy. It’s been so busy that they were compared to getting Taylor Swift concert tickets on social media.

“Our IT people were not prepared for the onslaught of demand so our IT person was like, ‘I can’t believe this is true but literally you have thousands of people sitting on your website waiting for you to release those tickets and it’s causing it to crash,’” he said.

He said it lasted for a few days, but the website is fine now. However, the demand is still high on weekends.

“We have a lot of people who are appreciative of the reservation system. The vast majority of people love it and want it because everyone

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