![\"U-Pick](\"https:\/\/fresnoland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Blueberry-Picking-09-1024x768.jpg\")
Fresno Blueberry Farm & Nursery<\/p>\n
Still, when a friend asked about our U-Pick excursion later, he scoffed a little. \u201cAh, they\u2019re just getting free labor.\u201d<\/p>\n
While that\u2019s undoubtedly true, I filled three paint buckets full of perfectly ripe blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries, and the whole haul cost me $23 dollars. I certainly wouldn\u2019t want to do it as a job, but as a way to get some very good berries (much sweeter than the ones from the store), the economics pencil out.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cU-pick is much better because I don’t have any full-time people that work for me,\u201d Bill Grady, the aforementioned farmer of Fresno Blueberry Farm & Nursery, tells me.<\/p>\n
He acknowledges, by the way, that \u201cBlueberry Farm\u201d might be a bit of a misnomer, as his blackberry and strawberry hauls this year far outstrip his blueberries. In fact his best crop, he says, is probably black-eyed peas. Still, everything must go (and I did find plenty of blueberries).\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI have people come in, help me clean up all the rows,\u201d Grady says. \u201cAnything that produces berries, that all has to come off at the end of the season and new stuff goes up.\u201d<\/p>\n
So he doesn\u2019t exactly deny the \u201cfree labor\u201d allegations. But it\u2019s largely up to the consumer.\u00a0 You can pay $7 a pound for they-pick blackberries, and $5 a pound if you pick them yourself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Blueberries,](\"https:\/\/fresnoland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Blueberry-Picking-16-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cI hire people to pick [in addition to the U-Pick operation], but my profits just go, because of the labor cost. I pay $18 an hour to pick for anybody that works for me. One guy, $20 an hour, but he died a couple weeks ago,\u201d Grady says. \u201cHe was the guy that shot that cop<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t the story I was expecting to hear astride a baby blue, postcard-ready farmhouse with a wrap-around porch among rows of gently swaying berry bushes. Again, that\u2019s part of the Fresno charm: people around here tend not to put on airs, and Grady is no exception.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019d been in the joint \u2013 was on parole when we first met him when we first moved out here. He worked for several people in the area. He was from Compton or Watts. I think the farm was just his escape from the jungle, it made him feel like a human. So we paid him well. There’s several people around here that liked his work. He had a key to my house.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to see why Grady\u2019s farm might\u2019ve felt like an escape. My audio recorder captures the sounds of birds chirping overhead, a light breeze blowing through the leaves of eucalyptus trees as we stand in neat furrows of blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries out back, with raised planters of tomato vines crawling up cages. Grady is fixing the branch of a peach tree while we chat (it cracked from the weight of the fruit).\u00a0<\/p>\n The farm is an escape for Grady too. It\u2019s been open since 2019, around the time he retired as a union plumber working in San Francisco.<\/p>\n \u201cMy last seven years, I’d come home on the weekends, Friday nights, get out of the truck and just start working,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Which isn\u2019t to say, of course, that the farming has been stress-free.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything came 20 days early this year,\u201d Grady says, noting that peak season for blueberries is in late April. \u201cThat’s what the other growers are telling me too. It got hot, and then it sent it into blossom. Everything. Boysenberries? Just trashed. I had a beautiful crop, but then that last heat wave came through a hundred degrees, and man, boysenberries can’t tolerate that. That\u2019s probably our hardest crop to grow, the most labor intensive. I\u2019ve lost my boysenberries two years in a row. I’m pulling them out. Maybe in a couple weeks it’s going to be corn. I\u2019d rather grow corn and watermelons.\u201d<\/p>\n Hey, no one said escapes don\u2019t require work.\u00a0<\/p>\n U-pick, from the consumer side, isn\u2019t much different. Drive out to a farm, scuff the dirt a little, sweat a lot, and by the end of an outing, hopefully you\u2019ll have hands covered in berry juice and a week or two\u2019s supply of fresh fruit. No one would tell you it\u2019s easier than buying them from the grocery store, but it\u2019s certainly nicer.<\/p>\n \u2013<\/p>\n More U-Pick blueberry and blackberry farms<\/p>\n Fresno<\/p>\n Fresno Blueberry Ranch & Nursery Hanford<\/p>\n Rancho Notso Grande Genesis Organic Farm Woodlake<\/p>\n Big L Ranch<\/a> Atwater<\/p>\n![\"Blackberries](\"https:\/\/fresnoland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Blueberry-Picking-19-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fresnoland.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Blueberry-Picking-02-768x1024.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
<\/a>2307 N. Hayes Ave.<\/a>
559.408.8765
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays, by appointment only.
Blackberries: $5 a pound U-Pick, $7 a pound they pick.
Blueberries: $5 a pound.
Strawberries: $2 a pound U-Pick, $3 a pound they pick.
Plus Peaches, plums, nectarines, tomatoes, squash & zucchini, okra, and black-eyed peas.
Accepts cash, Zelle, and Cashapp.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/a>5051 12th Ave<\/a>, Hanford
559.269.1162
Tuesday – Saturday, 8 am – 6 pm.\u00a0 (closed Sunday and Monday).
Apricots, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, flowers, nectarines, olallieberries, other berries, peaches, pecans, raspberries, tayberries, walnuts, farm made wine, jams, frozen cobblers and prepicked produce.
$7.50 admission, plus fruit price.<\/p>\n
<\/a>7595 Central Valley Hwy<\/a>, Hanford
Hours: By appointment only. 559.410.3607
Cherries, Blackberries, Peaches, Apricots, Apriums, Apples, Fuyu Persimmons and Pluots. (No blueberries).\u00a0<\/p>\n
20899 Avenue 322<\/a>, Woodlake
559.280.2767
Wednesdays: 6 – 9 am; 2 – 8 pm
Thursdays: 2 – 8 pm
Fridays: 2 – 8 pm
Saturdays: 8 am – 2 pm; 5 – 8:30 pm
Sundays: 8 am – 2 pm
(Closed Monday and Tuesday)<\/p>\n