Editorial policy

The rule behind every page on UPickFarms: publish only what can be traced to a source, show the source, and say plainly when something is not known. A missing season is better than an invented one.

Where farm information comes from

• Map listings found through web search. Most farms on file were found in public map listings found through web search. They supply the farm's name, address, phone number, website and map point, and each farm page says which of these came from a listing. We never copy their ratings, reviews or opening hours: a farm's hours come only from its own website.
• USDA public directories. The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes directories of farms that sell directly to the public, including on-farm markets and agritourism farms. They are U.S. government works in the public domain. They list some of the farms on file, and for those farms they add or confirm the name, address and location.
• Farms' own websites, quoted word for word. Whether a farm offers U-pick, which crops it opens for picking, its picking windows, in-season hours, prices, admission and policies come from the farm's own pages. Each farm page quotes the farm's own words word for word, with a link to the page and the date we read it.
• An AI reading of the same pages, checked against them. Software, including an AI model, also reads each farm's pages. Every date, month, price and name it reports is checked against the text of the page it came from, and anything that cannot be found there is dropped. A crop, a picking month or a closed-for-the-season notice is shown only when this reading and the farm's quoted words agree, or when the farm's own sentence states it plainly.
• State agriculture departments and Extension services. Typical state seasons for each crop come from harvest calendars published by state departments of agriculture and land-grant university Extension services, each with a link and the date we read it. Our guides are written from the same kind of sources and list them at the end of each guide.

How facts are read and checked

• U-pick is marked as confirmed only when the farm's own website says so in a sentence of at least 6 words, and we keep that sentence word for word. A heading on its own, link text (“click here for…”), a list entry, a sentence cut off mid-phrase, or a line that only says the farm is open on the day we read it, does not count.
• A month that dates an event, an opening day, a ride, the weather or a single variety is not a picking month, and a closure of a café, a play area, a garden center or one crop is not the farm's. When the farm says a crop's season is cancelled, the crop is listed as not offered that year and left out of the page title.
• A farm's own season always comes first. Typical state seasons are labeled as such, shown with their source, and never mixed into a farm's own dates.
• A season the farm dated to an earlier year is shown only as its usual months. Prices carry the season year the farm gave them, and older prices are removed. Picking reports (“strawberries are ready this week”) expire after a week.
• “Closed for the season” is not “closed”. A farm is marked permanently closed only when it says it has closed for good, been sold or stopped offering U-pick.
• The “in season this month” badge and the open-or-closed badge are worked out in your browser from the farm's own months and dated season, so they are never stale. Weather changes everything on a farm, so call ahead.

Which pages search engines see

A farm gets its own page only when its website confirms U-pick. Every other farm on file appears in the map finder with its name, town, phone number and website, without a page of its own.

A farm page is offered to search engines only when all of these hold: U-pick is confirmed in the farm's own words; at least one crop is offered for picking this season on its website; the page carries at least 3 different kinds of facts from that website (crop windows, in-season hours, prices, policies, activities, varieties or a picking report); there are at least 120 words of the farm's own information (a long quote counts as no more than 25 words, and house rules are not counted); the address and contact details are complete and the map point is the farm's own location, not a town centre; the farm has not closed for good; and it was checked within the last 400 days. Thinner pages stay on the site for visitors but are marked noindex.

State pages need at least 3 such farms, town pages at least 3, crop pages for a state at least 5, and national crop pages at least 10 farms in 3 or more states. A page whose text is 80% or more the same as a broader page (for example a crop page listing the same farms as its state page) is kept for visitors but marked noindex, and so is a page with fewer than 75 words of its own (farm names, towns, months, prices and the like, not the wording every such page shares).

What we do not publish

• No invented seasons, prices, ratings or reviews, and no placeholder listings.
• No star ratings and no review text copied from Google, Yelp or other sites.
• No paid placement. Farms cannot buy a listing or a better position.

Corrections

Anyone can report a mistake by emailing contact@upickfarms.net or using the link on any listing. We check each report against the farm's own published information and update the listing and its checked date when the change is confirmed. Details, including how farms can ask for removal, are on the corrections page.