We were told the flats would be 14-15 pounds yet they averaged only 9 pounds BEFORE removing the cardboard flat/hallucks. While this was alarming, the true disappointment came in eating the fruits which appeared to have been picked for the Montavilla Farmers Market on Sunday and left out to over-ripen and/or rot in the excessive heat until we were called (a day earlier than they were ordered to be picked up) and told to get them on Wednesday. The fruit was extremely over-ripe, in some cases the fruit at the bottom had mildewed, was not flavorful or even fermented in flavor.
As a small farmer myself I would NEVER have let a product in that condition leave my farm to be sold at full price. Suddenly, after purchasing we have been told the berries were "canner quality" but that is NOT what we were told prior to purchase and even so, these are NOT canner quality, these fruits are 3/4 COMPOST quality!!! I, along with MANY of us who ordered strawberries, am EXTREMELY disappointed and do NOT recommend this farm. They simply did not do the right thing for their customers and when called on it they either hung up or got angery with their customers. NOT good practices in any way and very disappointing. I have learned my lesson and will not purchase from Frog Mountain Farm in the future.
Comment
I had a very nice and unexpected call this morning from Derek Hassing of Frog Meadow Farm in which he apologized profusely for the condition of the strawberries I had received during the bulk buy earlier this week. He explained that due to the large buy, he had contracted out the labor to get the strawberries picked in time (something he NEVER does but did due to the size of the order he felt he needed to) and wasn't able to do a quality control check on all the flats that went out. I could hear how sick to his stomach he was that this had happened and he even offered replacement in veggies in the future but he did not want to offer strawberries again after this incident. Long story short my opinion of this farm/farmer has improved greatly knowing that the owner would take the time to place a personal call to apologize and realizing that this was a big and unfortunate learning experience for him.