Tanya,

Thank you for your comments.

I agree that the main idea behind Pick-Your-Own is the ability to choose the fruit yourself and it should be -- above all -- a pleasant experience.

While there are a few local PYO farms that permit customers to essentially wander the fields, we try to take a more organized approach for our main May-July strawberry & red raspberry harvest period. Most customers appreciate the assurance that they are picking in a row that has not just been picked but I recognize that some individuals find this approach somewhat confining.  We should do a much better job on our web site in explaining our approach to picking so customers would know upfront and then, could choose an alternative farm if necessary.  We do operate our minor crops: yellow raspberries, black raspberries, late season red raspberries on an unsupervised basis so I know that this system will work when we have only a few customers at a time.

Carl Lask
Lakeview Farms