With the All-England Championships cancelled and the lockdown pressuring the fruit-picking workforce, the ongoing pandemic proves to be a challenge for Hugh Lowe Farms in Mereworth, between Sevenoaks and Maidstone.
Last year the farm supplied more than 33 tons of the summer fruit to the tennis tournament, but this year there will be no crowds descending on SW19 for what is widely considered one of the highlights of the sporting and social calendar.
Owner and director Marion Regan spoke to the Oxford Farming Conference Podcast about how these unprecedented times are affecting the business: "The Wimbledon fortnight is traditionally the peak of the English strawberry season," she said, "but if you remember we’re actually picking fruit from April all the way through to November using different systems. But during those two weeks it's really important for us and we are the only strawberry supplier to Wimbledon, so yes, it's a lot. They do manage to eat a lot.”
"I had been talking to them and there’s not many adjustments we can make, we’re sort of pretty committed to that crop now. It’s planted and it’s there. But there’s some tweaks that we can make to timing, because the challenge is always to get that particular crop that we’ve targeted to peak during those two weeks. I'm hoping everyone will think 'gosh it's high summer, let's eat plenty of strawberries' and we will be able to find other outlets for it."
Soft fruit farms across Kent have been impacted by the lockdown and restrictions on the movement of workers within Europe, which has led to a drive to recruit more home-grown workers for the summer's harvest.
