I've been to Baguio city numerous times in the past but I only visited Strawberry Farm for the first time on my last visit there last month. It was everything I expect it to be, a farm filled with rows of strawberry plants, rippled with blistering red colored strawberries all of which seems ripe for the picking.
"Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields. Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about. Strawberry Fields forever" This Beatles song was buzzing in my head as I look the surrounding of this farm located in La Trinidad, Benguet which is about 30-45 minutes from downtown Baguio. Me and my friend Sheila took a cab near Burnham Park to get here after having our breakfast at Session Road.
Strawberries costs from 100 pesos to 150 pesos (bigger ones) per kilo, but If you opted to pick the strawberries by yourself it costs at around 300 pesos per kilo. Yeah, it costs more if you plucked it out from its plant by yourself. Guess, it costs more for the added experience of playing strawberry farmer for the day.
"Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see. It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out. It doesn't matter much to me. Let me take you down, cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields."
The farm also have lettuce, onions and a few rows of corns which Sheila pointed out wont really grow much since corn needed to be in numerous rows and columns to produce an ideal size of corn, but the farmers might have planted the corns as an afterthought since it is the strawberries and the lettuces which they were really harvesting there.
The farm is surrounded by rows of souvenir stores where you can buy Strawberry wine, wood engravings, scarves and shawls and other items. We were wrapping up to leave after buying one kilo each of strawberries and 100 peso worth of "Pinipig" when a bus load of tourists arrived and they hurriedly went inside eager to pick for themselves some strawberries to the delight of the farmers and the vendors.
I only get to taste Strawberries when I'm in Baguio and I almost ate the whole 1 kilo on our way back to downtown Baguio - luckily my digestion kept pace and I never had any bowel problem the rest of the day. The green Pinipig (rice crispies) also tasted good in my mouth.
Strawberry Farm in La Trinidad Benguet is a good side trip for anyone visiting Baguio City, it presents a cool experience especially if you opted to pick the strawberries by yourself, which we didn't opted - we just made do with walking along the field while watching the farmers tend to their strawberry plants.
Baguio and its neighboring towns, with its overpopulation and mostly crowded streets still provides a new experience for me everytime I find myself there. It has an abundance of things to offer for one to see, eat and explore and the Strawberry Farm is just one of the many places one should check out when in Baguio.
