Hensen fruit farm Hundreds flock to pick-your-own strawberry fields in Swisttal

Swisttal · The Hensen fruit farm in Swisttal opened up its strawberry fields to pickers on Sunday for free. The company was surprised but pleased by the amount of people who came. The number of corona cases amongst the staff has recently gone up.

 Free pick-your-own strawberries attracted crowds to the Hensen fruit farm in Ollheim

Free pick-your-own strawberries attracted crowds to the Hensen fruit farm in Ollheim

Foto: Benjamin Westhoff

On Sunday afternoon the Rhein-Sieg district press office announced that the fruit farm in Swisttal which was initially affected by 20 corona infections is still awaiting the full results of the second series of tests. The team from the Rheinbach test centre had taken a total of 180 swabs on Thursday, and three more retests were carried out on Friday. By Friday, the laboratory had evaluated 159 of the total 183 tests, and the corona virus was detected in ten of these. Three of these ten positive swabs are from people who had a negative result in the first test the week before. Over the weekend, 16 negative test results were received by the district health office, and eight results from the total of 183 tests are still pending.

On Sunday, hundreds of people picked strawberries from the eleven hectare fields belonging to the Hensen fruit farm in Kleinbüllesheim and Ollheim. "I actually only told three friends about it," says owner Irmgard Hensen. She wanted to open the fields "for tasting and for pick-your-own", because the so-called mulching is due in the coming weeks and as many edible fruits as possible need to be removed beforehand. "We thought it would be nice if people could benefit from the strawberries that we were unable to pick ourselves due to the current circumstances." However, pick-your-own was only allowed on Sunday and for the time being is not planned for any further days.

All work on the fruit farm had to be stopped following a coronavirus case which was determined when a seasonal worker was admitted to the Marien-Hospital in Euskirchen after suffering a stroke. The woman from Romania, who has been in Swisttal since 5th June, tested positive for Sars-CoV-2 at the clinic. She had no symptoms. The Hensens immediately reported the case to the district health office. Since Friday 17th July, everyone has been under quarantine. Shortly after the corona case became known, Swisttal's mayor Petra Kalkbrenner said that she was considering what to do with the ripe strawberries in the fields. According to her, harvesting, processing and delivery of the fruit could only be resumed once all further tests came back negative and anyone infected had recovered. Kalkbrenner had suggested that volunteers from the general public could help.

Rudolf Hensen, who, like his wife Irmgard, has been tested negative, had also spoken out before. "At the moment we do not know how to proceed", said Hensen. The problem is that when the fruit begins to rot, it infects the rest. Irmgard Hensen had not expected people from all over the region to come and pick fruit throughout the day. Nevertheless, according to Hensen, it was no problem for the pickers to observe social distancing: "The rows are not so close together and they are also huge fields.” This could be seen on site - according to GA information, the people in the fields kept their distance. Hensen said that she is just pleased that she was able to bring joy to so many people unexpectedly.

(Original text: Elena Sebening, Translation: Caroline Kusch)

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