SALEM — Between Marty, father Bernard and grandfather Charles, the Nanneman family lays claim to 90 continuous years of strawberry production in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

Once Marty and his father formed a partnership in 1992 and Marty became a full-time farmer, their push toward fresh market and overall farm diversification was on.

Nanneman Farms now runs a thriving fresh market operation that, in addition to stocking their own produce stand, sells strawberries, blueberries and blackberries to fruit stands and businesses in Salem, Eugene, Corvallis and Bend, Ore., and Vancouver, Wash.

They also sell processed berries to nearby Willamette Valley Fruit Co.

In addition to the fruit business, Nanneman Farms grows grass seed, wheat and several seed crops including sugar beets, cabbage, parsley and wildflowers on the 278-acre farm.

To extend the availability of strawberries, Marty Nanneman has been experimenting with growing “on plastic.”

Instead of planting a single row of plants with a machine in the dirt on 42-inch spacing and then fertilizing and watering over the top, a three-foot raised bed is covered in plastic. With the plastic in place all the water and nutrients need to be supplied via drip tube below the plastic.

“Though it allows us to constantly give nutrients for summer long production, it requires a whole different irrigation system,” Nanneman said. “We plant two rows per bed by hand and, rather than mow plants off after harvest, all the leaf removal is done by hand.”

After two seasons of production the plastic and drip tubing must be removed, he said.

“They’re still local strawberries and have a high sugar content but are a lot firmer and have a much longer shelf life,” Marty Nanneman said. “That is why we have strawberries available into August.”

Nanneman is also invested in a new strawberry that is not yet named.

“I’m really excited about this variety coming out of Nor Cal Nursery,” he said. “It will extend our season of June strawberries into July.”

When he opened the fruit stand in 1988 they were picking about 50 pounds of strawberries through their U-pick operation. Nowadays it takes about 5,000 pounds a day to supply their own stand and fill the orders of their fresh market customers.

Depending on demand, the farm packs 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of fresh market blueberries a day during the season, and harvests 2,000 pounds of cane berries a day for fresh markets.

For the strawberries alone, the increase in business meant going from a crew of two to 15-20 people who show up at 5 a.m. every day during the season.

They also have a small crew dedicated to folding cardboard boxes.

“When we’re picking 500 crates of fresh market berries a day, I also have to have a crew that is assembling and building these boxes,” Nanneman said. “Once the day’s order for fresh comes in, they switch over and start picking, stems off, for processing.

“A small-scale fresh market operation takes a different kind of mentality than a production farm,” Nanneman said. “You have to scale your production and harvest to what you can sell in a day.

“You cannot just go out and pick 20,000 pounds of something if the shelf life on it is only 72 hours — that’s the limitation we’re constantly struggling with.”

He has pursued growing Albion on plastic because it affords customers a much wider window.

“I’m still learning how to do this on plastic,” Nanneman said. “I can grow June-bearing strawberries on dirt with my eyes closed but the plastic production is completely different.

“We will never abandon our June-bearing strawberry production because they’re simply sweeter and simply better, but we have to respond to our customers and they like having sweet, local strawberries they can eat all summer long and that takes production on plastic.”