Family farm 'devastated' as vandals destroy fruit crops

Blagdon Fruit Farm in Weymouth had its crops vandalised when customers decided to ‘pick dozens of perfectly good strawberries as well as green strawberries [which were] not ripe yet, and whole stems of strawberries and simply threw them on the ground.’

Yasmin Reid took over the running of the farm shortly after she turned 21. Her grandparents who own it decided to retire six years ago.

She made a Facebook post about the incident in order to ‘raise awareness’ and in the hope that it would never happen again.

Yasmin said: “I was much in two minds whether or not to write the post as we have such lovely customers, but it was just an accumulation of other little incidents.”

She revealed that ‘lots of things happen’ including people throwing the strawberries about and eating the fruit and not paying.

The strawberry crop after the clean-up (Image: Yasmin Reid)

“I work so hard to grow these strawberries and I had to have a day to process what had happened.

“I’m devastated to see our hard work literally on the floor.”

She explained that many of the strawberries both abandoned and squashed on the floor were still green and would have been ready to be picked in the next few weeks.

Yasmin and her mum have been sorting through the fruit to see what was salvageable so that they could take it home to eat themselves, but she revealed that ‘most are not useable.’

They don’t know who vandalised the crops as they were ‘busy in the tearoom’ at that time and Yasmin has considered the idea of putting measures in place to prevent things like this from happening again.

She said: "It’s a really hard industry to be in."

Yasmin added: "We are lucky with our customers, and we hope it won’t happen again."

She said she is ready to ‘make the most of things and move on.'

"We’re ready to start fresh," she said.

In the post to Facebook about the incident, she wrote: “We would like to remind our customers to respect our crops and our farm and remember that this is our livelihood.

“We put our heart and soul into everything we do here at Blagdon and when someone disrespects it, we feel it to our core.”

The strawberry crop after the clean-up (Image: Yasmin Reid)

She is also extremely grateful for the feedback that her Facebook post received: “The response from Facebook has been wonderful,” she said.