Like most people, I have good days and bad days at work.

Although, I should point out, whenever my wife refers to my work, she always makes those little quotation marks with her fingers. My wife doesn’t think I work very hard, is what I’m saying.

But there are days when things don’t go right. There are days when things sort of pile up or fall through, or when I can’t seem to type a coherent sentence to save my life.

Then there are the good days. Days like the day I had Tuesday.

Shortly after lunch Tuesday, I drove over to Carl Junction to chat with Steve and Tami Fredrickson. The couple own Fredrickson Farms and are gearing up for strawberry season. Actually, they already geared up for the season. Now they’re waiting for their months of hard work to pay off.

On Tuesday afternoon, as Tami walked me through the strawberry patches, she stopped, bent down, plucked a large, juicy strawberry off a plant and handed it to me. As I bit into the lush, red fruit, I decided that I was having one of those good days at work.

Now, I’m sure there are better things to do than to bite into a strawberry that seconds ago was attached to a plant. I’m just not sure what they are. There is just something about fresh-picked fruit that can’t be duplicated.

Steve and Tami have been operating Fredrickson Farms for 11 years now. When they started the business, located at 303 N. Grimes St., the couple concentrated mainly on growing and selling pumpkins and running their greenhouse. About four years ago, they decided to branch out (ha) into the strawberry business. It was a move they are glad they made — most of the time. Times like now, when the strawberries are about ready to be picked. Other times — like, oh, I don’t know, the times for planting, covering, uncovering, mowing, weeding, watering and worrying — the couple sometimes wonder about their strawberry strategy.

“I love to eat them, but to be honest, I hate strawberries,” Tami said with a laugh.

As crops go, strawberries are sort of labor intensive. There is the planting procedure, of course. The couple have about 20,000 strawberry plants in the ground. Then there is the matter of protecting the plants in the winter and early spring. Like a lot of growers, the Fredricksons use plastic to protect their plants. Steve compared the long plastic sheets that cover the plants to “acre-long dryer sheets.” During crucial growing times, the plants need to be covered toward the end of the day and uncovered by dawn to protect them from the cold. Many mornings, Steve said, he’ll be hauling the sheets off the plants as the sun is coming up.

“It’s hard work, so you’ll be sweating. But, because it’s cold, you’ll also be covered with ice,” he said.

Then there is the little matter of the stuff you can’t control — like the weather. Last year’s late spring freeze, as it did for just about every grower in the area, pretty much wiped out the Fredricksons’ strawberry crop. And when you lose a crop, you’re not just losing potential income. You’re losing all the money and time you spent getting that crop in the ground. The freeze took most of the small profit that Steve and Tami made in the first three years in the strawberry business. But that’s farming. Sometimes it’s a gamble.

“That’s why you don’t find many farmers in Las Vegas” Tami said.

Yep, farm work can be backbreaking. It can be stressful. It can be frustrating. But it also can be exhilarating. It can be rewarding. It can be the best job a person could ever hope to have. But you have to love it, or it will drive you crazy, Steve and Tami said.

Steve and Tami love what they do.