West Orchards Farm Market

West Orchards has been farmed by the West family since 1891, and Todd and Ame are the fifth generation. Sixty-six acres, and close enough to Lake Erie that the weather behaves differently.

What You Can Pick

• Strawberries - from early June
• Sour cherries - "approximate dates - Mid June thru July"

Coming: "We have also recently planted brambles & sweet cherries. They will be ready for u-pick in about a year or two."

Good to Know

U-pick hours are 8am to 4pm and the farm is closed on Mondays, "weather permitting & until picked out". Early and late in the season the farm asks you to ring first.

Its own explanation of why it fares better than its neighbours is the best sentence in this region: "Because the farm is closer to Lake Erie than many others, their weather is moderated by the lake which helps them escape late spring frosts and early autumn freezes."

Pro tip: in a year when a late-April freeze took the cherry crop off orchards all over Ohio, the lake is the reason to drive to Perry rather than inland. Sour cherries for pie are the crop that suffered most this spring, and West Orchards sits in the one strip of the region built to survive it.