Farmer scraps 'pick your own' after greedy customers steal strawberries - and even bring cream to dip them in

Anyone who claims to have picked their own strawberries and resisted the temptation to secretly gobble a particularly juicy specimen is almost certainly lying.

And for 50 years, Hacker's Fruit Farm was content to put up with a smidgen of deceit as people made their way through rows of plants weighed down by the brightly-coloured fruit.

But the manager has now ripped up the entire crop after becoming fed up at people gorging themselves for free on what was supposed to be his livelihood.

Mark Spight said he had been losing a quarter of each year's yield to greedy punters at the farm in Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire.

Some families were stuffing themselves with up to £15 worth of the summer fruit, costing the business as much as £225 every day.

'The cheek of people was unbelievable. People were treating it like a giant open buffet,' he said.

'We'd expect to make about £40,000 during the strawberry season but we lost £10,000 of that to greedy gorgers.

'We spotted one family sitting in the field with a bowl of water to wash them and then a bowl of cream they were dipping them in.

'One woman came up to the counter, covered in juice on her trousers, up her arms and even in her hair. But she handed over a punnet with four strawberries in.

'A mum walked into the shop with her family and her sari was bulging with fruit. But her husband handed over an empty basket saying they couldn't find any.'

The father-of-two added: 'Children would play in the fields ripping up the green fruit and throwing them at each other but the parents would get defensive if you confronted them. It's vandalism - you wouldn't do that in Tesco.

Three-year-old Mia Bavington enjoys some strawberries at Hacker's Farm

'People's attitudes have changed over the years. There's no respect for people's property anymore.'

The family farm, which had grown strawberries for 85 years, enjoyed its heyday in the 1980s when the fruit covered 20 of its 35 acres.

Aggressive competition from supermarkets meant that by 2000 there were just four acres. The rest of the farm is rented out to grow wheat.

Mr Spight, who is married to Hayley, 36, took over the farm five years ago from his wife's father and two uncles, who had inherited it from their parents, William and Daisy.

In recent years, pickers have been charged just £1 for a pound of strawberries - half the price in supermarkets.

Now the fruit has been replaced with rows of redcurrants, blackcurrants, loganberries, tayberries and gooseberries.

Mr Spight, who also runs a farm shop to help make ends meet, said: 'We still allow pick your own for the berries as they are far too sharp for people to gorge themselves on.

'But we only allow people on who are friends, family or look likely to behave.'

Mr Spight is not alone in recognising a change in attitude among people visiting his farm.

Soft Fruit Farm in Hardwick, Northamptonshire, has also stopped growing strawberries this year.

Owner Jane Willmot, 51, said: 'It is as if the public read "something-for-nothing" instead of "pick-your-own".

'We have to stop. We work hard enough on our farm already.'