Hi, Carl! This is Sue and I pick every Friday at your farm. You may know me as the lady who picks raspberries in the fall right up til frost. Yesterday I picked 8 half pints of raspberries and brought my own containers and box and also had a card for a free half pint. On the way up from the picking, the berries all seemed to roll to one side and over the edges of the containers. The young man weighed them rather than charge me for the 7 half pints for a total of $25.37. I was astounded at this price but, nevertheless, wrote the check. My friend, who picked with me, had 6 half pints and one free half pint and also brought her own box and containers. Although her containers were as full as mine, hers were not all pushed together in her box. Her total was a little over $10. In other words, I paid $15 more than she did for the 2 half pints more. We even put them side by side when we got home and there was no difference in the amount of berries in the containers. (I even took a picture of this and can text it to you). I just want you to be aware of this inconsistency so it does not happen to someone else. On a lighter note, your berries are wonderful this year. My freezer is full of strawberry and raspberry jam. Thanks, Sue Bigogno

Sue is a very loyal Gold card customer who has picked raspberries at our farm since 1997. Unfortunately, I was not in the immediate check out area to observe these two transactions but it is possible that our caculation of halfpints via weight was in error.  Our check out personal are instructed to weigh any container that contains loose  berries  out of the plastic tills.  This procedure avoids having customers rehandle and bruise the  berries when putting them into plastic tills for pricing.  We assume a half pint of raspberries is 6.4 oz or .4 lbs. which is more than the 6.0 oz  in grocery stores. I have adjusted Sue's 2014 Raspberry card to make it worth 8 free half pints of raspberries and will caution our check out personnel to perform a reasonability check on their half pint calculation.  If there appears to be a problem,  have customers individually put the loose berries into empty containers.  It seems unlikely that the loose berries in Sue's box could have doubled the number of filled half pints. Farmer Karl Lakeview Farms