In the spring season they've been gone through and cleaned twice. The berries need to be picked twice a week because they are ripening that fast. Bittner uses no pesticides on the berries and instead relies on a large flock of ducks and chickens to keep slugs, sowbugs and earwigs from ruining the fruit. Handpicking slugs that hide beneath the black plastic mulch is necessary. The slugs get a certain percentage of the crop, but it's sort of a live and let live situation.
Aphids can be a problem at times also.
To combat disease, Bittner sprays the crops once in the winter with Bordeaux, a mineral salt. In the summer we pick off diseased leaves, pick off bad berries, which is very labor intensive. Hours of backbreaking picking and grooming of strawberries pays off for the Bittners and their son, Moss, however. For home gardeners Bittner suggests growing strawberries on raised beds mulched with porous landscape cloth. The weed fabric is nice and that would be best for strawberry beds.