Spada U-Pick Farm

“$2.25/lb u-pick strawberries this year are sweet and delicious. The owner was very nice and let us borrow containers to pick with. They also had a little farm stand with rhubarb, asparagus, and a few other things. Berries are small, and can be a bit picked over, but so many plants we were still in and out with 10 pounds in no time.”

“I have been coming to Spada Farms with my family for Hood strawberries for more than 50 years. No matter where we lived, from Clackamas to Forest Grove and everywhere in between, we never seriously considered going anywhere else. For our family, this was never just a stop for berries. It was a pilgrimage. It became a rite of passage across generations. We would come for enough hallocks to make freezer jam for the year, with a few pints left over for close friends. I do not know that my children have ever really known the taste of store-bought jam. That was part of the tradition. The special ingredient was never complicated. It was good fruit, handled with care, turned into something that carried love, memory, and family forward. This year, I had to make the trip myself. My oldest is serving overseas, my middle child has my newest grandchild to care for, my younger middle was sent out of state for work, and my youngest had work. So I made the trip because I knew that if I did not, we might miss the season. After today, I almost wish we had. When I asked about the berries, I was told that what was there was all that was available. What was there was not the quality I have known from this farm for decades. The berries were leaky, overripe, terribly soft, and already past the point where much of the fruit could reasonably be expected to hold up for freezer jam. In all my years of coming here, I do not think I have ever seen a more disappointing lot of fruit from this stand. Instead of the five hallocks that would normally continue our family tradition, I bought one and a half, hoping I could salvage enough usable fruit to make even one hallock’s worth of jam. Maybe it was just a bad day. Maybe the season was already turning. Maybe expectations built over 50 years are hard for any place to live up to. But what made this so disappointing was not only the fruit. It was the feeling that the quality being sold no longer matched the trust my family had placed in Spada Farms for generations. I am older now. I cannot simply work around a bad stand experience the way I might have years ago. That makes honest quality at the stand matter even more. For over 50 years, this place represented the best strawberries in the state to my family. Today felt like the end of something that had once been great. That is a hard thing to write, but it is harder to pretend this visit was acceptable.”

“Honestly I’m sitting here with a bunch of berries in my fridge that I’m about to throw away after spending so much time picking them with my family. I can’t get something out of my head, an employee told us repeatedly that we shouldn’t eat the berries without washing them because we can get parasites. No farm worried about parasites should be selling AT ALL. Hoping my children and I don’t get sick from the ones we tried at the farm.”

“They’ve become dishonest. They constantly short-change you on weight—especially their young female assistant. They overstate the weight. It’s unpleasant.”

“Stopped by the stand and bought 2 pints. After removing the rotted and slimey berries, I probably have a handful left..”