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A BERRY busy Christmas!
Normally Ricardoes Tomatoes & Strawberries is overrun with families picking berries and enjoying scones and fresh jam at the cafe.
But with pandemic lockdowns shutting out visitors, the family-run business has been left with tons of strawberries – and no one to pick them.
“School holidays are usually a madhouse here,” says farmer Anthony Sarks, who regularly welcomes 100,000 visitors a year to his farm at Blackmans Point on the NSW Mid North Coast.
“We rely on the visitors to the area, and that all came to a halt in June. That’s when the trouble started. I couldn’t bear to see the big pile of strawberries in the back paddock. I’d seen on the news strawberry farmers dumping their fruit. And I said, ‘Oh, I can’t do that.’”
Determined not to let his hard-earned crop go to waste in September, Anthony, 66, teamed up with a local artisan manufacturer to create a now award-winning strawberry jam. Together, they’ve produced around 30,000 jars.
“Overall, the response has been great
