Fresh strawberries are so worth the wait.

I’m not one to purchase my strawberries in the grocery store in January, no matter how delicious they look. Instead, I wait patiently for June to arrive.

New Hampshire strawberries, fresh-picked and still warm from the sun—juicy, sweet and redder than red—are perfection. Those winter strawberries can’t begin to measure up.

I wish I’d taken a picture early Sunday morning at the local farm where I picked my strawberries. A bucolic, hilltop farm with rolling fields and a dozen or so stooping pickers in the early morning light. Even if I had taken a picture, two important things would have been missing: the sweet smell of strawberries in the air and the quiet chatter of the pickers. A blissful summer scene.

Of course, a few of those berries didn’t make it into my box. They were so perfectly ripe they just had to be eaten right there in the field. Warm from the sun.

Should I worry about eating a few unwashed strawberries in the field, given that it was not an organic farm? Should I worry about eating the big box of strawberries I brought home and washed?

We’re hearing a lot right now in the news about California’s debate over the approval of the pesticide methyl iodide for use in the state’s strawberry fields. Sadly, the danger seems to be mostly for the workers who are exposed in the field. Methyl iodide is a neurotoxin, a developmental toxin and an endocrine disruptor. It causes autism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and various learning disorders as well as cancer.

According to the United Farm Workers, life expectancy of field workers in California’s strawberry fields is 49 years.

A “top 50″ list I found names 50 pesticides currently in use in California for strawberries. Whether those toxins are passed along to consumers almost isn’t the point. It’s yet another hidden cost of our dysfunctional food system that we support this industry that poisons its workers, all so that we can have big, red strawberries all winter long throughout the country.

Not me, though.

I buy my strawberries locally, and pick my own when I can. (All this information is draining a little bit of the joy out of my Sunday strawberry picking experience.)

What’s my risk? And, are any field workers or farmers being harmed in the production of my beautiful strawberries?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. I do know that strawberries are hard to grow without chemicals and I do know that I love them—probably enough to accept a little risk in order to eat them.

Of course, I’d choose organic if it were easily available.

In fact, there’s only one organic pick your own strawberry farm in New Hampshire (the Shirley Farm in Goffstown), although there are many small organic growers. The University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension website provides advice for strawberry growers; the chemicals chloropicrin, thiram, danitol, lorsban and sevin are just a few of those listed for dealing with the pests and diseases that might afflict strawberries.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) ranks strawberries third on its Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides List of Fruits and Veggies, a list of the 49 most toxic fruits and vegetables (behind peaches and celery in toxicity). The EWG conducts its tests using washed fruit, just the way we’d eat it at home. Since we eat the entire fruit, skin and all, we’re injesting whatever residue is left on the skin of the fruit as well as what was absorbed through the roots.

Strawberries are mostly water; that’s water drawn up through the plant’s roots. At the risk of over-simplifying, it seems logical that any pesticides and chemicals applied once the plants set fruit would end up, in part, in the fruit itself.

I take comfort in knowing that both of the local farms whose berries I either purchase or pick describe their strawberry farming methods as “low spray.” It’s great knowing that they care about this, think about it and manage their use of chemicals carefully.

However, I’m struck by how little I know about what “low spray” actually means.

As much as I love my strawberries, I really do owe it to myself to dig a little deeper and ask a few more questions next time. What kinds of chemicals? When? For what? What happens when they use less?

With a little more knowledge, I could make this organic vs. non-organic choice with more confidence. And I might learn a thing or two about strawberry farming in New Hampshire in the process.

In the mean time, my fresh strawberries—those that aren’t yet in the freezer or already eaten, that is—still hold plenty of joy for me. Not the least of which is the joy of learning a little bit more about one of my favorite foods and what’s involved in bringing it to my table.

How important is organic to you when you decide where to buy or pick your strawberries?