We were driving home south of Riding Mountain National Park when something alongside the road caught our eye.
Not far from the park, while heading south on Manitoba’s Highway No. 10, we saw periodic signs along the road with a great big strawberry on white coroplast. It was affixed to a strong rebar frame, indicating these signs were put out by someone who was serious about his or her offerings. Each sign beckoned with an arrow pointing further down the road. After seeing several of these, we thought, ‘okay, there was a sign along the highway not far from my parent’s cabin at Sandy Lake, so why don’t we go?’ We’ve never gone to a U-pick strawberry farm before.
The next day our party – my wife, kids, my mother, and my mom’s friend, Betty, went to church near Erickson, seeing signs along much of the way. ‘We’ve got the check this out,’ we thought. So after church, before lunch, off we went.
The signs we saw the day before were spaced about every 3.2 kilometres from Riding Mountain National Park to the turnoff on Highway No. 45. They extended a full 20 kilometres. I pointed out that none of the signs indicated a distance to the ultimate goal. Surely this strawberry farm must be just off Highway No. 45, we thought.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” I said of their marketing strategy. If someone’s already gone 20 kilometres in search of strawberries, he might as well go 23.
Then it was 24, 26, 28…. And still no strawberry farm. But there were still plenty of signs.
“Where was this damn farm already?” we wondered.
One sign did not indicate continuing onward.
“That must be the turnoff,” I said. So we went a mile west, only to find… nothing. There was a red pickup driving quickly in the other direction on this forlorn grid road.
“Must be someone else pissed off they can’t find the strawberries,” I said. We laughed.
The day was mostly cloudy, so there was no indication of the sun’s direction. We were now at least 10 kilometres from the nearest highway in any direction, wandering the backroads of western Manitoba with no map, no cell coverage for Google Maps on my cellphone, no GPS, no food, and still, no strawberries. Thankfully, the truck had a compass and I have a pretty decent sense of direction and the grid road system, so we found our way back to road 270, where we found, yet again, another strawberry sign.
Okay, it couldn’t be much further. So off we went again. It was much further. Six kilometres later, we saw a substantial valley. “This must be the one just north of Minnedosa!” I exclaimed. In the bottom of the valley, we saw a sign, indicating a left turn. We followed the valley road, and there, finally, was the farm on the valley floor.
The gate was laid aside. There was a small SUV parked beside the nice little shack. Off in the distance, a few people were picking strawberries on the far end of the plot.
I went to the door. There was no one there and the door was locked. There were no buckets to buy, and no one to give money to.
I walked down to the people at the other end who were already coming back. The man, from Calgary, said the people who were there before him had opened the gate, and that the owners weren’t around. “They said she went to town, maybe for church,” he offered.
“They left and didn’t even leave any money,” he said, indicating he would leave some money for the small plastic bag he picked.
We had come all this way, only to not be able to pick the strawberries we so desperately sought without effectively stealing them. There were no buckets and no bags; there were just fields of strawberries that we couldn’t ethically eat. Dejected, disappointed and hungry were all understatements for how we felt, but we still had a good laugh. We had been led by these signs like sailors called onto the rocks by the sirens of old.
The Calgary man had grown up in Brandon, and had hunted in the valley in his younger days. He told us to follow the road to the east, and it would come out near Minnedosa.
We followed the winding easterly road for 10 kilometres through a First Nation reserve, hopelessly lost, but guided by the ever-present strawberry signs at every turn. Hitting the highway, we headed for Brandon to find food and go shopping. The next day we would discover signs from the south, too.
I thought of how reminiscent these signs were to the fourth season plotline of The Walking Dead. The survivors were separated, but all the encounter signs promising, “Sanctuary for all. Community for all. Those who arrive survive.”
They just had to keep following the railroad tracks to a place called Terminus.
It sounded wonderful, but at the end of the line was a community of cannibals waiting to capture and eat them.
Betty said, “I think we’ll get our strawberries at Co-op.”
