Strawberries were king back then
During the early to mid 1900's strawberry fields were a common sight and a major crop on much of the Delmarva Peninsula. The town of Pittsville was a major contributor to this enterprise. Farmer's came into town to the auction block with cars, trucks, or horses pulling wagons loaded with crates of strawberrys to be sold to the highest bidder. From the auction block the berries were moved to the railroad siding in town, awaiting the next train. Oftentimes, there would be a trainload of strawberries leaving the station. The business eventually died out when the strawberry plants began to suffer a disease known as Red Steel, perhaps partly from replanting over and over in the same fields that had been harvested, and also because the intensive labor requirements for picking and packing became hard to meet.
In Pittsville in the early 1900's. Sometimes as many as five lines were formed to get into the auction block. It may be visible that there are crates of strawberrys in the back of this car.
Trains passing in Pittsville. The closest train is loaded with strawberries. This was about 1920.
This photo from 1908 shows people lined up at the Pittsville railroad station ready to board the train for a trip to Ocean City.
These tickets from our collection are dated 1940 and are representative of what many of the strawberry farmers used. They all had the farmer's name printed on them. The name here has been blocked out for privacy. All had a number on them to represent quarts. There would be a makeshift packing shed, being little more than a few poles and a tin roof to protect from the sun, somewhere central to the fields. A picker would have a carrier in which to put small strawberry baskets full of berries to take to the packing shed. The number of baskets (quarts) would be counted and tickets would be given to the picker for that many quarts. At the end of the day, usually, the picker would turn the tickets in for cash. In some cases the picker could keep the tickets and turn them in for food at a local grocery store and the farmer would later collect the tickets and pay the cash value to the grocer. The amount pickers got per quart varied with packers a bit, but may not have been more than 10 cents a quart in later years. In the early years it was likely considerably less. During the strawberry season, sometimes families of pickers would move to a farm to live in a dwelling provided by the owner for the duration of the season. But that was yesterday, or so, I reckon.
