FABULOUS FRUIT from hepworth farms!

The cost of a sweet and luscious 20-week Fruit Share is $420: exactly $21 a week. Typically, we get 2 to 4 different kinds of fruit each week. Most shares weigh about 5 lbs. (except for the weeks you get berries). Fruit shares are not pre-boxed. The share starts with two weeks of amazing strawberries and continues with sweet and sour cherries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, apricots, and plums in July; peaches, nectarines, pears, and cantaloupe in August. From September to November you’ll get watermelon, gooseberries, ground cherries, grapes, apples, and more pears. You can check out photos of previous years’ veggie/fruit shares here.

The Fruit Share runs for 20 weeks, but our Veggie Share runs for 24 weeks. That means there will be 4 weeks that we will get veggies but no fruit. We don’t know yet which weeks we will skip fruit: it depends on if there is a good strawberry harvest—fingers crossed!—and if Hepworth has a good stone fruit harvest. Read your weekly emails for updates.

Here’s a preview of the variety you can expect throughout the season: BERRIES: strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and gooseberries; CHERRIES: sweet and sour; PEACHES, APRICOTS, and PEARS: Bosc, Devoe, Clapp, Seckel, and Asian; APPLES: Gala, Sweeties, Golden Supreme, Cortland, Empire, Mystery Red, Mutsu, Fuji, Macintosh, Ginger Gold, Honeycrisp; GRAPES: Concord, Niagara, and Cayuga. Plus ground cherries, watermelon, and cantaloupes.

​Hepworth’s melons are organic and so are most of their berries. But the humid weather in the Northeast typically requires some spraying to grow apples, peaches, pears, plums, grapes, and cherries. Hepworth practices Integrative Pest Management (IPM), which means they spray only when necessary, using small amounts of targeted synthetic pesticides, which are less toxic to the microorganisms that live in the soil.

Please note: You can register for a Fruit Share without getting a Vegetable Share. Fruit-Only share members must work three volunteer shifts, just like all veggie share members, and purchase a membership fee. Please check out Volunteer Info for details.