Iowa row-crop farm diversifies with berries

Pick-your-own crops provide added income

Winter in Iowa is like a bad houseguest – it comes early and stays late. Needless to say, Iowa may not be the greatest place to make money from strawberries. Or is it? At least one farm family thinks so.

Don Getting is a third generation grain farmer and a first generation strawberry producer. He and his wife, Mary; and his mother, Sheril; own and operate Getting’s Garden, a 10-acre U-pick strawberry business. They get help from their son, Andy; daughter, Brittany; and a full-time employee, Ken Nilles. They also raise one acre of raspberries, and of course, there’s still the row-crop operation. They farm 1,300 acres of corn and soybeans and up until 1995, they also raised hogs.

In 1983 they added the strawberries as a way to diversify the operation. “Mom’s uncle had been in fruit for three generations, so I had a mentor,” says Don. “They had everything at one time or another.”

Don, Sheril and Mary Getting display the fruits of their family’s labor – a crop of luscious strawberries.

Photo courtesy of Getting’s Garden

Besides having someone close who knew the business, Don Getting and his family had great strawberry yields on their first try.

“It was beginner’s luck that got me excited at the beginning,” he says.

It hasn’t all been easy, though. Iowa’s cold weather means there’s more to do in order to care for the fragile berries. The Gettings planted trees making two five-acre boxes around the strawberries and put in permanent snow fences to block the winds during the critical bloom time and to make it more comfortable for visitors. In the fall when the ground freezes, they put their New Holland TM125 tractor to work with a bale buster to cover the strawberry beds with corn stalks. In the spring, they uncover the beds but leave a strip of mulch down the middle of each row. Visitors who come to pick their own berries appreciate that touch.

“Even if it rains two inches, they’re not going to get their feet dirty,” says Don.

The Gettings use smaller New Holland tractors in their strawberry patch – including a TN75S with a SuperSteer™ front axle. “We use them for everything,” he says. “I put more hours on these tractors for strawberries than I do for the row crops.”

There are two irrigation pumps for the strawberries, so there are lots of irrigation pipes to farm around. That makes for some very tight turns, which the SuperSteer handles with ease.

Berry successful

n the beginning, strawberries made up a very small percentage of the Getting’s operation, but today, it makes up about a third. Berries have been such a success for them, they are thinking of adding blueberries to make up for the gap between the strawberry and raspberry picking seasons.

Don Getting has noticed over the years that people in the East and West Coasts are getting away from the U-pick operations. But in the Midwest, people are still close enough to agriculture to be interested in coming out to the farm and have a good time picking berries. Two thirds of the Getting’s strawberry operation is U-pick and they have 4,500 visitors each year. And, needless to say, the Gettings are happy if those guests come early and stay late.


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