Come on over and pick yourself some red and/or black raspberries!

You-Pick rules:

1. We ask that you bring a container in which to pick (if you forget, we have some). Don’t put too many berries in any container or bag: The berries are quite fragile.

2. Parking: Almost all of the time, there is plenty of parking in our drive. If it gets full, it is OK to park on Jay Road, but park your car completely off the pavement. The shoulder on the north side of Jay is especially wide.

3. Walk through our drive to the gate immediately north of the farmstand. To open the gate, grasp the handle, pull and lift the gate toward you, press on the thumb latch, and the push the gate open. Walk all the way to the north end of our yard, and go through the north gate (opens easily) to the farm.

4. Stay AWAY from the ponds! They are DANGEROUS! The small pond immediately west of the NW corner of our yard is eight feet deep, with vertical clay walls and a bottom of one foot of clay mud. VERY difficult to get out of. KNOW WHERE YOUR KIDS ARE if you bring them!

5. This, obviously, is a working farm. BE CAREFUL OUT HERE! A lot of the rows have steel pins in the ground at the ends of the rows to which we tether the trellises. Those pins are easy to hit with a toe or shin. Some of the steel trellises are angled into the alleys between the rows. They are easy to hit if you aren’t careful. Stay off the tractors and machinery! Watch and control your children

6. Pick only ripe berries. You know a berry is ripe if it pops right off the stem when you gently grasp and pull it. If it doesn’t come right off, please leave it for tomorrow.

7. Pick thoroughly. Pick one side of the row at a time. Don’t try to pick the other side until you get to the end of the row. Lots of the berries are hidden in the foliage. Gently move the leaves and peek under them. This is a treasure hunt!

8. Please do NOT cross the raspberry rows. If you touch a raspberry cane, the thorns will tell you not to do it again. But the plants are actually fragile and are easily damaged. The plants are planted in soil ridges, and the ridges are VERY easy to damage. So, if you want to go to another row, PLEASE walk to the end of the row rather than crossing the row. Again: Please keep your children informed of this rule.

9. The eating rule: We would never ask you not to eat while you pick. But please be fair: suggestion -pick ten eat one. Remember we have to pay our bills. Or eat all you want, but pay for them!

10. Some of the rows may be muddy. Dress accordingly. Wear shoes, not sandals, not barefoot.

11. Where are the berries? Walk north by the hoophouse on our main north-south farm lane. Vegetables are initially on the immediate east and west sides of the lane. The vegetables are NOT You-Pick. Please stay out of the vegetable rows—The plants are very fragile. After the vegetables, you will come to the berries, first on the east side of the lane. There is a row of elderberries on the north end of the east vegetables. Then a row of blackberries. Neither the elderberries or blackberries are ripe. The next two rows are red raspberries and have ripe berries. Pick to your heart’s content!!!

12. And more berries: Continue north on the lane to the end of the east-west rows. The first four north-south rows on the east side of the lane have ripe red raspberries. These plants are a year younger than the plants in the above paragraph. So many of the berries are hidden in the foliage.

13. After the four N-S red raspberry rows, row 5 is a blackberry row—Not ripe yet.

14. Row 6 is our black raspberry row! Pick away!

15. We suggest that when you finish picking, you put your berries into the lightweight plastic bags we have on the roll on the fence next to the farmstand. The You-Pick operation is just like the farmstand: The honor system: Weigh your produce on the scale, use the calculator and paper pad to compute what you owe, and pay into the black mailbox on the post next to the plastic bags. To make change, we have a Change jar with Hoot ‘n’ Howl bucks and U.S. coins.

16. Come to the farm! Have fun!

Janet ‘n’ Bob

Hoot ‘n’ Howl Farm LLC

6033 Jay Road

Boulder 80301

Farm: 303-530-9504

Cell: 720-771-0483