Strawberry fields forever

My friend Mike Wallace has been delivering flats of Arkansas strawberries to lucky neighbors, and photos of those beautiful Bald Knob berries have been popping up on my social media feeds. Mike and I grew up in Arkadelphia, but Mike has deep family ties to Bald Knob, where his father was once the mayor.

The Arkansas strawberry season is coming to an end, but recent weeks have seen long lines of cars at places such as Holland Bottom Farm in Cabot. Most mornings have been marked by the folks at Holland Bottom posting Facebook updates along these lines: “We’re trying to open every day at 10 a.m. The parking lot opens at 9:30 a.m. We now have three lanes. Strawberries are $5 a quart or $18 a flat (about five quarts). There’s a limit of two flats per adult in the vehicle. No limit on quarts. We aren’t taking any preorders. Due to high demand and social distancing, we may not be able to sell our strawberries out of vans in Little Rock and Searcy.”

Those notices usually are followed by posts within a few hours that announce: “We’re sold out for the day.” We all know that the pandemic will result in fundamental changes in our society. One result, experts tell us, is that people will become more aware of where their food comes from and try to buy locally produced products when financially feasible. I’m hopeful this will lead to a renaissance in the growth of strawberries in places such as White and Lonoke counties, peaches in places such as Johnson and Howard counties and tomatoes in Bradley County. Arkansas has a rich tradition in these agricultural niches. While the size of the industry will never be what it was when Arkansas products were shipped across the country, there’s plenty of room for growth.

“In the early 1900s, a McRae box factory’s entire output was used for the shipping of strawberries, and strawberry production constituted the largest industry in the town, even when compared to cotton and timber operations,” Deborah Moore writes for the Central Arkansas Library System’s Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “The McRae Strawberry Association was created in 1912. Other towns such as Judsonia, Bald Knob, Searcy and Beebe were also major sites of production, complete with warehouses and canneries. The growth of the industry led to an increase in tenant farming in White County, and the emergence of cooperatives provided for the cheaper export of berries across the country, with shipping by truck becoming common in the 1930s.

“In 1938, county agents in Searcy County organized a cooperative marketing association — Flintrock Strawberry Growers Association — to help growers in obtaining supplies and marketing. The flintrock ridges of eastern Searcy County became a strawberry growing area, peaking in the mid-1950s. The railroad led to the emergence of Arkansas’ strawberry industry, but other innovations in transportation, such as the shipping of berries via refrigerated truck, actually led to its decline, especially as it became possible to ship from areas of the country more sustainable to the cultivation of strawberries. For berries to grow to their sweetest, the weather has to be warm and sunny. Cold and rainy weather produces inferior berries.”

The strawberry industry moved to California and Florida.

Daniel Wheaton is given credit for having planted the first successful strawberry crop in White County in 1874. The first strawberry association at Bald Knob was organized in 1910. Ernest Wynn and Jim Collison started The Strawberry Co. in 1921 and built what was said to be the longest strawberry shed in the world, three-quarters of a mile along the railroad tracks at Bald Knob. In the peak year of 1951, growers near Bald Knob sold $3.5 million worth of strawberries, and the town began calling itself the Strawberry Capital of the World.

One thing I regret as my Arkansas travels have slowed during the pandemic is that I’ve not been to The Bulldog in Bald Knob this spring for its famous strawberry shortcake. Though the restaurant continues to sell the shortcake long after the Arkansas strawberry season has ended (using berries from outside the state), it’s a fitting tribute to the area’s agricultural heritage.

“For White County, strawberries represent far more than a sweet, juicy treat signaling the beginning of another Arkansas summer,” says Sherri Sanders, who works for the University of Arkansas’ Cooperative Extension Service in White County. “Although berry picking for most folks these days means choosing a quart of strawberries to take home for dinner, strawberries were once the source of an economic boom in towns such as Judsonia, McRae and Bald Knob. After Wheaton’s venture proved successful, strawberry farming quickly became the leading cash crop of the area. The sandy soil that’s ideal for growing strawberries, coupled with the proximity of the railroad system to transport the berries, contributed greatly to the growth of the strawberry-farming industry.”

Sanders says entire communities were involved in the strawberry business. Schools would end the spring semester in late April so children could pick strawberries. According to Sanders, the wage for pickers during the peak years of production was “5 cents per quarter, which pales in comparison to the consumer prices that sometimes top $5 for a quart of locally grown strawberries these days.”

—–––––❖–––––—