In an area better known for stone fruit and juicy apples, a berry farm is still pumping out strawberries as the inversion layers roll in and Jack Frost comes calling.
Ettrick Gardens usually produces strawberries for the Christmas markets and through the summer months to March.
But for the first time, using hydroponics, he was still selling them, the latest he had sold strawberries in 40 years of growing, Ettrick Gardens owner John Preedy said.
"I thought they would just end in March like the other ones in the ground. But they just keep coming, keep flowering and coming through," he said.
"The ones on the fields have nothing left on them. But these ones just won’t stop."
He planted 5000 of them in hydroponics and it had been a pleasant surprise how well they had done, he said.
"I put them on benches and put them in this year - just a small trial. Never thought how good they would go but they seem to be pumping them out.
"I just put them out on the field - east-west, like you do. Nothing special - like anything else grown round here."
He said when some frosts arrived over the past few weeks, they put the reflective sheets they used to colour apples over the strawberries to cover them and that had helped keep them warm when the frosts came down.
"But we haven’t had a bad autumn. There has been a bit of rain around and the strawberries don’t mind that."
He said the covers would no longer go on as the last of the strawberries got sold and the season came to an end sometime this month.
Mr Preedy, who is at the Otago Farmers Market every Saturday, said the customers seemed to like them, and enjoyed them at this time of year.
