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Berry Time in Tennessee

Submitted by Collins Parker on May 7, 2008 - 11:40am.

One of the joys of living in East Tennessee is buying strawberries in May.

It's our best local crop of the year.

But last year's strawberry crop in East Tennessee was a disaster. The late freeze wiped out most of the crop. And what you could find, didn't taste all that good.

So I began this year's season with a Strawberry Pilgrimage on Sunday.

1) My first stop for berries was downtown Chattanooga.

I stopped by the Chattanooga Market to see if they could deliver on their promise to provide the best local crops.

And they did. The Hughes family was set up right out front at the 1st Tennessee Pavilion.

They were slinging quarts and baskets of berries they picked that very morning on their Flat Top Mountain Farm.

I had to wait my turn because of the demand. But they seemed to have plenty of berries for everyone.

I also got a quart from the Rainbow Hills Farm booth from McMinnville.

2) From the Southside, I headed north to Cleveland. My target is Burke's Berry Patch. I drive through town on Highway 11, turn right on Old Tasso Road and follow the signs.

They take me to a field out in the country, lined with rows and rows of berries. You can buy what they picked in the moring or you can pick your own. Unfortunately, the lady in front of me bought the last quarts, and it was a little late in the day to go picking. The moral of the story is that berries get picked in the morning, so the early bird gets the worm.

Still, it wasn't a total loss. I stopped by the nearby Tennessee Mountainview Winery for a couple of bottles of Bradley County Brew.

3) From there, I headed home. But on the way, I ran across a roadside strawberry stand in Ooltewah. It was on Mountainview Road, just north of the high school.

The guy at the stand said he grew them on his farm off highway 58. They're building their own produce stand, but it's not ready yet. So he'll be under the "Local Strawberries" banner until June.

So here is my review of the berries I bought Sunday:

***** Flat Top Mtn Farm (Chatt. Market)- big & very sweet, the ultimate East TN berry (that gets plenty of sun instead of rain when ripening)

**** Ooltwah Berry Stand- again excellent berries, picked from the field just that morning

** Rainbow Hills Farm (McMinnville)- smaller berries, with varying degrees of ripeness

??? Burke's Berries- looked pretty, but I didn't get any

Next weekend, I'll make another pilgrimage in search of the best berries in the Tennessee valley.

But you don't have to wander the highways to find them. Just ask at any roadside fruit stand. "Where do your berries come from?" Hopefully, they'll tell you from a local farm or from Unicoi, TN (the capital of the strawberry empire in East Tennessee.. and very good berries).

Luther has been pitching the local berries at P&P Fruit at the old Farmer's Market. They are on 11th street, down from the Newspaper, across from the Community Kitchen. They've got berries this week from Dayton.

The bottom line is that if your community fruit stand doesn't have local or Tennessee berries now, they're a fraud. They're just buying their merchandise from the same distributers that grocery stores use, with fruit picked before they are ripe in states far away.

Buy Local. It's better for you, better for the environment & good for Chattanooga (by encouraging local growers to stay in business).

Here are some of the local growers in our area:

Chatata Farm (Burke's Berries)