Click Here to Order Strawberries for 2012

The temperature outside finally hit 70 plus degrees and got us thinking about fresh summer fruit. Winegars started retailing fresh farm products to the Ellensburg community in 1960. My mother, Phoebe, was born and raised in Walla Walla, Washington and wanted to introduce her family’s farm fresh strawberries to Ellensburg. Ethyl Klicker, wife of Klicker Farms cofounder Jake Klicker was my Grandmother Vinas’ sister or my Mom’s aunt. So, 51 years ago, Winegars sold our first Klicker strawberries.

A Klicker Strawberry is a vine-ripened strawberry that has been grown in the foothills of the Blue Mountains by the Klicker Family. A Klicker Strawberry has the tradition of having excellent quality and of being “Famous for Flavor”. When we get the berries they are all washed, sorted, stemmed and packaged in a variety of sizes ready for freezing, canning, making jelly or jam or just plain eating right now on top of some great Mt. Stuart Vanilla ice cream. Back in 60’s and 70’s freezer jam made from strawberries was real popular. So was repackaging the 28 pound bucket into quarts and pints and freezing for year round use.

The Klicker Family has been raising strawberries in the Walla Walla Valley since 1918. It began when brothers Del and Jake Klicker picked too many garden strawberries at their mother’s Klicker Springs Hotel located in the Blue Mountains. Needing to dispose of the extras, the industrious brothers hitched their wagon to their horses and traveled 15 miles to town and immediately sold the strawberry flats for a premium price. They found out they could make more money selling their mom’s garden strawberries than the blessed to have employed several generations of local youth. My Mother, in fact, picked strawberries there starting when she was 14 way back in 1939. A big percentage of the kids in Walla Walla had their first job there.

Today, Kirk and Nancy are the fourth gereration of Klickers to raise June bearing strawberries and still employ primarily youth to harvest the crop. They currently have 35 acres of strawberries and employ approximately 250 workers, from ages 12 and up.

A lot of old timers will tell you how they used to park on 15th street, here in Ellensburg, lined up from our dairy store all the way to Kiwanis Park, some four blocks away. Some would walk all the way from there to get their “first come first serve” strawberries and then carry them back to their cars. When I was 13 I remember carrying buckets all the way to Kiwanis Park for customers. One evening my dad asked me if I’d learned anything that day. I told him I learned it was a lot easier to carry the strawberry buckets to the curb on 15th street and wait for the customer to drive from their parking spot near Kiwanis Park to right out front than to carry them all the way down there and walk back. That may have been the first time I heard the comment about growing up to be a rocket scientist.

We enjoy carrying on the tradition my mother started way back in 1960. From those same fields mom helped her family pick strawberries in the 1940’s we offer the Kittitas County fresh Klicker strawberries – sorted, washed,stemmed and sliced in four sized containers – 3#, 7.5#, 20#, and 28#. I hope you enjoy some.

Gary Winegar