Tony was part of a wave of Portuguese-speaking immigrants that settled East Falmouth in the 20s and 30s. He came in as a crew member on a cargo ship, a three mast schooner that was owned by Rhode Islanders and re-possessed on what was supposed to be a return trip. He found family in Falmouth and started working the cranberry bogs, and eventually, he saved up enough to buy land. His story is a common one; the people who remember still call St. Anthony's the church built by strawberries, and it's true. Strawberries in East Falmouth were big business way back when.The soil in East Falmouth is what made the industry such a success. It's a coarse, sandy soil called Carver soil, with the high acidity and good drainage that strawberries like. At the height of production, the town grew half of the strawberries consumed in Massachusetts, and was the biggest growing region north of Maryland. (That's according to a recent article inEdible Cape Cod about the history of the strawberry industry in Falmouth; to read more—and it's very interesting, so if I were you I would—head on over here.)
It wasn't until the 40s and 50s that production started going down. Tourism and development were starting to grow on the Cape, and the farmers in East Falmouth started selling off their acres, one by one. It was hard to get workers at picking time, too; Jeff Andrews remembers his parents bringing up families from Rhode Island to pick, and housing them all through June. When even the seasonal workers stopped coming in the 70s and 80s, they decided to open the fields to pick-your-own, and today, that's still how Jeff makes things work.
He's open every morning during the season, from eight a.m. to noon—any later, he says, and he gets determined folks passing out from heat and sun stroke. Mostly it's the old timers that come, but there are also a few young families mixed in. The day I went, Monday, I picked 16 pounds, and my only companion was this gentleman, and his Maxwell can.
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