Entry Fees

Why do we charge for Pick Your Own entry?

Manor Farm Fruits have been growing and selling fruit via Pick You Own for over 50 years. During this time, we have had to adapt, modify and evolve considerably. Unfortunately for the last 10 years growing fruit has cost more money to deliver than it has generated. Every year we, as a family, have the difficult discussion about whether we can continue to fund the fruit growing and offer a Pick Your Own at Manor Farm Fruits. Every year we decide to continue, as we love what we do and enjoy opening up our farm to our lovely customers and giving you the opportunity to pick your own fruit.

The changes over time that have affected the PYO are multiple:

  • The ever-increasing price of fruit growing.
  • The team who works all year round to provide an amazing crop.
  • Maintain our polytunnels.
  • The cost of Coya (coconut fibre) bags the strawberries are grown in.
  • Storing the propagated plants in chilled conditions.
  • Planting, pruning, weeding, irrigation and feeding the crop.

These are the costs we aim to cover when deciding the price of the fruit.

On top of the fruit growing costs are the costs associated with opening our fields to the public. These include and not exhausted to:

  • Health and safety risk assessments.
  • Daily checks
  • Mowing
  • Fencing
  • Signage
  • Staff
  • Punnets
  • Children’s play area
  • Play Straw Pyramid and tunnel
  • Bouncy Castles
  • Administration
  • Transaction fees

Our admission charge and booking fee aims to cover these costs. (Don’t forget 25p of each £1.50 is VAT).

The way our customers use the Pick Your Own has changed. When Pick Your Own first began it was a way to buy food in bulk, fill the freezer or make jam. Today our customers come to enjoy the PYO as a family day out. They use it to introduce their children to the concept of “where our food comes from”, to get them out into the fresh air and enjoy a day of wholesome family fun. Most only want a relatively small quantity of fruit to take home compared to the number of family members who visit the fields. This is by no means a bad thing, merely an observation we have made over the years. We absolutely support the public visiting our Pick Your Own to connect with their family and friends and create amazing memories. Unfortunately, we can’t continue to fund this and this is why we implemented an admission price for visiting our Pick Your Own fields. We consider this to be a very fair price for what can become a full day out. Children also enjoying our play area, bouncy castles, children’s maze, Straw Pyramid and tunnel. All of which cost us a considerable amount to maintain annually. (In 2012 we charged £2.50 for just 20 minutes on our bouncing castle!)

We recognise that paying an entry fee into the PYO is a mindset shift for many of our longstanding customers and we acknowledge that all our customers have their own personal spending and budgets to consider.

For those who don’t feel they would get value for money from their experience in our PYO fields we have plenty of our delicious strawberries and other fruit available to buy from the Farm Shop.

We hope this gives you an insight as to why we have had to charge an admission price to enter our farm.

We do hope you will continue to support us and thank you for your devoted custom.

The Clarke family and Manor Farm Fruits team