The City’s Strawberry Obsession
A local glut of strawberries has upended the market, left bakers with half-empty pie tins, and frustrated fruit merchants.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Nobody wanted anything but strawberries, and the merchants had hardly sold a case of any other fruit during the whole week. Everybody seemed to have gone strawberry mad, and the result was that the retail market had been demoralized. The result of people eating strawberries instead of pie in restaurants had reduced the bakeries' pie trade by one-half. There is good reason for people going crazy over strawberries, for they are remarkably cheap. Best berries sold as low as 50 cents per crate, and the ruling price was from 75 cents to $1.25. Considerable quantities are left over each night this week. They are still coming to market in large quantities; some growers even ceased picking on account of the low prices that left them after picking, freight, and commission were paid.
“Everybody seemed to have gone strawberry mad.”
The seasonal obsession with regional produce is a hallmark of Pacific Northwest living. This 1893 report of a market 'glut' echoes modern-day farmers market culture, where bumper crops can turn a commodity into a fleeting, hyper-local obsession.
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