Looking for a U-Pick / PYO Farm and live in the St. Louis metro area? click here
If you live outside of the St. Louis metro area, your state agricultural university ( like: Purdue, Cornell, Michigan State, Univ. California at Davis, Ohio State, Penn State, University of Maine, Iowa State, Nebraska, Kansas State, Clemson, Univ. Maryland, Rutgers (NJ), Univ. Mass, Virginia Tech, and the Univ. Wisconsin....) extension service may have an online or hard copy publication listing the farms in your area. Failing that, here are some nation wide web sites that you could try:
PickYourOwn.org contains as complete and up-to-date a listing of Pick-Your-Own farms as any website in the US. Click on http://www.pickyourown.org/. J.B.(Blake) Slemmer of Atlanta, GA created this site and seems to extend considerable effort in keeping it current and well maintained but there is no search capability for specific fruits --- you must browse listings by State and County to locate an appropriate farm. This is a well used site with very high traffic count. Google will often list this web site first in search results for PYO farms.
J.B.(Blake) Slemmer also has a sister site http://www.pumpkinpatchesandmore.org/ that lists pumpkin patches. This site also has very high traffic (hits) so this appears to be a site that lots of people are using when looking for pumpkin patches.
Local Harvest: www.localharvest.org This California based service is an good source for PYO farms but leans heavily toward organic production. This is also an excellent source for Farmer's Markets.
Don't overlook Google's search engine's "local
map" search capability: http://www.google.com/maps.
Type in exactly this order: 1)the fruit you are looking for 2)the word
"farm", the word "near" then your home zip code: i.e.
strawberry farm near 63141.
The "near" becomes very important the farther away you live from the
farm location. Using the same keywords and doing a search
from the standard google search bar (
www.google.com
) is often less successful and the search results are generally
cluttered with non relevant websites. Bing or Yahoo
search are usually not very helpful when looking for PYO farms unless
you know the name of the farm.
| Some of the alternative "find it" sites (not yet as complete as I would prefer) are: |
| StrawberryPlant.org: Relatively new and limited to only
strawberries -- like PYO org sorted by county with limited search
capability--click on
http://strawberryplants.org/2010/07/pick-your-own-strawberries Map Muse. Second in listings to pickyourown.org but unfortunately, it is rather difficult to work thru their menu choices to find the appropriate category so if you are interested in Pick Your Own Fruits & Vegetables click on this link http://find.mapmuse.com/interest/pick-your-own. If you are interested in Pumpkin Patches Click on http://find.mapmuse.com/interest/pumpkin-patches. |
| Farmer Direct 2 You. This site has a fair number of listings by state but lacks any search capability for specific fruit or vegetables. Click on http://www.farmerdirect2you.com/ |
| Farmvisit.com. A well designed site but very few listings. Click on http://www.farmvisit.com/ |
| Farmer Maps. Very few listings. Click on http://www.farmermaps.com/ |
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