What does a pick-your-own 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 why some have compared demand for those slots to getting tickets to pop star Taylor Swift’s Eras tour—even causing a website crash.

“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 15^th 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 weekeday reservations and are on the website right at 6 p.m., to reserve a time for the next day its 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 is accustomed to it, they go to the movies and get a reservation and it's no big deal,” he said. There is, of course, a sliver of the population that don’t feel comfortable with it and we know there is unintended consequences for the senior citizen group that don’t do stuff on their phone and we feel bad about that. They just need to call us and we can help them.”

Strawberry season usually ends in mid-June and based on the flowers on the plants he said they have about 28 days left. 

New this year at the farm is the bakery run by Harriet. She said in the past they have always had strawberry glazed and cinnamon sugar donuts but this year they decided to expand their offerings by bringing in a strawberry cookie, a strawberry chocolate chunk muffin, strawberry pound cake, pie and croissants. They even stock Gruto’s soft serve, which uses Wegmeyer strawberries to make its strawberry ice cream.

“Everything we are baking celebrates the strawberry,” she said.

She said the bakery has been a huge success so far. 

Tyler said so much so that he didn’t figure so much of his time would be spent baking until midnight. But he said they love being there and don’t want to disappoint the strawberry lovers. 

“Strawberry season only happens for a short time, if you miss it you have to wait a whole other year to pick berries and get a strawberry cookie,” she said. 

The farm operates three strawberry fields, two U-pick ones including at the home base in Hamilton, and Oatlands Farm and a third at Gilbert’s corner. Gilbert’s corner is usually for pre-picked berries for people who don’t want the experience of picking their own, Tyler said. 

Next year, the Wegmeyers plan to open a fourth field in Lincoln, about a half mile down the road from their Hamilton farm.

Harriet said as part of that they are planning a huge festival to celebrate the strawberry and the village of Lincoln by bringing the community together. 

She said it will be a fun hometown festival filled with community, a pie eating contest, maybe an ice cream eating contest and art contest among other things.

Tyler said they plan to create a foundation leading up to the celebration to raise money for local organizations and offer a scholarship to high school students going into an agriculture field. 

They also plan to restore one of the oldest barns in the county, the Taylor barn and hope to have it finished in time for the festival. The Taylor barn was built in 1600s, he said.

The Lincoln Strawberry Festival will have its inaugural weekend May 18-19, 2024.

Learn more at wegmeyerfarms.com.

There are several U-pick farms throughout Loudoun County.