Source: WILMINGTON BIZ, 4/16/21


Decades before the N.C. Azalea Festival blossomed, another plant marked the start of spring in the Wilmington area: strawberries. The plant and its juicy fruit not only were popular at dinner tables, strawberries were part of a thriving local business known as truck-farming.Instead of being sold only in local markets, strawberries and crops such as lettuce, cabbage and melons were shipped to distant markets, usually via truck to a rail depot, where refrigerated train cars transported them to cities along the East Coast.

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