SEQUIM — For $1.25 you get a deep breath of sky, an earful of breeze and birdsong. And a view that stretches out like a corrugated green sea.
Tossed in for good measure: 1 pound of crimson sweetness.
The strawberries are what bring people to Graysmarsh Farm’s gate every June.
Washingtonians — and their visiting families — know the place as a U-pick paradise.
But when you leave the paved road and cruise toward the fields, you realize you’re in for more than fruit.
“I come through that gate every morning and I get energized,” said Sue Jones, the 77-year-old who herds pickers into the rows that radiate from her new weighing stand.
U-pick season started later than usual this year.
So last Saturday, when Jones opened the gate at 8 a.m., a hungry flood rushed in — and kept on coming till 4 p.m.
Pretty much every ripe berry on the property was picked, so Jones didn’t reopen till Tuesday.
Summer run
She and farm manager Arturo Flores expect the rush to resume and run through summer.
Loganberries and lavender will ripen in two weeks, blueberries come in mid-July and blackberries follow in August.
“They can go until November, but we’re only open until September,” said Flores.
After that, people can still pick on the honor system of leaving their money at the wooden stand with the lavender door.
Farming began on the property in the mid-1940s, and various crops have grown there.
Flores, a transplant from the Mexican state of Michoacan via Los Angeles and Fresno, Calif., discovered Sequim during a two-week vacation to Western Washington in 1982.
He became boss at Graysmarsh in 1996, at age 32.
On a recent afternoon, he and Jones took a walk in the fields, to reflect — and taste their produce.
Flores picked a pair of dark red strawberries, one for a visitor and one for himself.
The sensation of that first bite is beyond adjectives. A noun, perhaps “candy” or “heaven,” comes close.
Flores, for his part, goes with understatement.
“They’re edible,” he deadpanned following his test.
“Strawberries like warm days and cool nights. And the Pacific Northwest is known to do that.”
