Pick-your-own crops yield 70% of farm's profits

Emma Tacon says pick-your-own crops are a lucrative crop for the farm and prove a bargain for customers

A farmer has said pick-your-own fruit has yielded the best profits of all of the crops grown on their fields.

Emma and Charlie Tacon have farmed 200 acres at Grange Farm in Rollesby, Norfolk, for the past 15 years and Charlie's father, Richard, started the pick-your-own business in 1980.

Mrs Tacon said 70% of the business's profits were generated through pick-your-own crops such as strawberries, raspberries and gooseberries, despite using only 10% of the farm's land.

"We've got 20 acres of pick-your-own and there's no labour input from us and labour is a big cost. That makes it very profitable," she said.

Customers can save money by picking their own fruit as the farm saves on the labour costs

Mrs Tacon, 47, added: "It offers the customer a bargain if they're prepared to do the hard work, which is also enjoyable.

"Pick-your-own raspberries are £6.30 a kilo, but if you buy them ready picked in our shop they're £15.75 per kilo.

"It's helping families save money, it's proving a cheap day out and it's showing children where their food comes from and they get to pick fruit among the butterflies and damselflies."

She added that the varying weather from extreme heat to heavy downpours had affected the crops and picking season.

"Every year seems to be different these days. This year we had a very dry spring so the crops were stressed; [strawberries] came early.

"Pick-your-own opened early; it was very hot and everything raced along.

"We grow different varieties [of strawberries] to extend the season but they all came very quickly and we finished slightly earlier than usual.

"But it was a wonderfully sweet crop and they were full of flavour, and now we have the blackberries and redcurrants and autumn raspberries," she said.

Blackberries cost £17 per kilo if ready picked, but the pick-your-own price is £6.30

"[On] wetter days, tourists aren't on the beach so they do come out into the fields and bring their brollies and their wellies, and we need the rain.

"[But] it's far more important to have a dry weekend when there's more people about.

"The problem with the British weather is it's unpredictable, so what we have got planned [with fruit and vegetable pickers] can be turned on its head.

"Thankfully we grow lots of different crops and there will be potato packing or onion grading to carry out, and it's very rare that weather like this carries on for too long. We have to work around it," Mrs Tacon said.

Emma Tacon says it is comical to see children smeared in strawberry juice having eaten crops in the field

Some farmers have told the BBC previously that the temptation seems to be ever present for customers to eat as they picked the fruit and some abused the system.

"It's always comical when you get a toddler in the field whose smeared their face in strawberries.

"We joke that we ought to weigh the children, but actually, the blackbirds take more. It's just part of the fun," Mrs Tacon said.