Virginia’s Strawberry Season: Time to Pick Berries and Head to the Lincoln Strawberry Festival
As appeared in Northern Virginia Magazine
By Colleen Kelleher May 1, 2024
With each bite, the sweetness explodes in your mouth and perhaps a little juice dribbles down your chin while your fingers turn a touch red. Virginia strawberry season is here.
With the May to June season — a harbinger of coming summer crops — NoVA’s nearly three dozen strawberry farms will soon sell them by the pint, quart, or pound. And thousands of families will head to U-pick fields to select berries themselves.
Courtesy Wegmeyer Farms
“May is just the perfect time in Loudoun County to go have fresh strawberries right from the field,” says Harriet Wegmeyer, who owns Wegmeyer Farms with her husband, Tyler. The Wegmeyers grow large “super sweet” Chandler berries, one of two popular varieties grown in Northern Virginia. The other is Ruby June, according to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
Courtesy of Wegmeyer Farms
Wegmeyer’s is one of 231 Virginia farms that grow strawberries, and it has three Loudoun sales locations: a farm stand at Gilberts Corner, at Oatlands Historic House and Gardens, and at its home farm in Hamilton (Lincoln, to be specific). This year, for the first time, Wegmeyer’s will hold what customers have wanted for years: a strawberry festival, but with a twist. The Lincoln Strawberry Festival, hosted by the Wegmeyer Farms Foundation on the weekend of May 18 and 19, will be a fundraiser.
“That is the greater mission of the festival,” Wegmeyer says about the $20 event just down the road from the main farm in a field planted last September. It will raise money for the Lincoln Community League, Lincoln Preservation Foundation, Lincoln Elementary School, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Loudoun, Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum, and Loudoun County 4-H. “It is a fundraising opportunity for not only these six chosen nonprofits, but also scholarships for high school students, both for Loudoun Valley and Woodgrove.”
She says the one must-try item will be the festival’s signature dish: strawberry shortcake.
Because the farm wants to ensure everybody who attends gets berries, Wegmeyer says ticket sales have been capped at 1,500 per day, and may sell out quickly.
Courtesy Wegmeyer Farms
“Everybody that wants to walk away with a bucket of berries, whether they pick them themselves or they grab a pre-picked bucket, will have that chance.”