By this week in July, the strawberry chapter of the Pungo year is closed. The festival crowds are gone, the Cullipher fields have moved on, and the guides that treat Pungo as a spring day trip have gone quiet until pumpkin season. If you live out here, you already know that is when the good part starts. Blueberries hit their stride, sweet corn shows up on the tailgate stands, and the farms that stay open past Memorial Day settle into a weekly rhythm that has almost nothing to do with the tourist calendar.
The thing worth understanding about Pungo in mid-July is not which farms exist. It is which days they open, what they are picking that morning, and how to string them into a Saturday loop that ends with breakfast instead of a sunburn.
What's ripe right now, and why the calendar matters
Virginia Beach grows nearly 400 acres of strawberries a year, most of it on family farms in Pungo. That is the headline stat every guide leans on. It is also the wrong one for July. Strawberries are done. What is happening in the fields right now is a rolling handoff from berries to summer vegetables, and the crops that carry Pungo through the next eight weeks are blueberries, blackberries, sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, squash, beans, and watermelon.
Blackwater Blueberries, at 5140 Blackwater Road, is the clearest example of the July calendar. The farm opens for the season around the end of June and runs Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Miss that window and you are driving out for a locked gate.
Pungo Blueberries Etc. on Muddy Creek Road has been at this for more than four decades. Their pattern is picking on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, closed the days in between to let the bushes recover. That schedule is not a suggestion. If you show up on a Tuesday in July expecting a bucket, you are going home empty.
Rule of thumb for Pungo blueberries: the farm is closed roughly half the week on purpose. Berries need a day to ripen between pickings. Plan around the farm's schedule, not yours.
The stand-by-stand map worth keeping in your glovebox
The farms cluster along three roads: Princess Anne, Indian River, and the network of side roads pulling south toward Back Bay. Here is what is actually open in July and what each one is known for.
| Farm | Where | What to go for in July |
|---|---|---|
| Cullipher Farm | Off Princess Anne, south Pungo | Pre-picked summer produce, homemade ice cream, Scottish Highland cows the kids will not stop asking about |
| Henley Farms | Pungo | The stand longtime locals name before visitors have heard of it, strong seasonal vegetable rotation |
| Flanagan Farm | ½ mile south of the Pungo stoplight, on Pungo Ridge | Fourth-generation family operation, prime-soil vegetables, mid-June through summer u-pick |
| Brookdale Farm & Market | 2060 Vaughan Road | Open 8 to 6 Monday through Saturday, 8 to 5 Sunday, subject to what has been picked out that day |
| Vaughan's | Pungo | Roadside stand locals default to for straightforward fresh produce |
| Blackwater Blueberries | 5140 Blackwater Road | U-pick blueberries and blackberries, Fri to Sun only, end of June through summer |
| Pungo Blueberries Etc. | 3477 Muddy Creek Rd | U-pick blueberries and thornless blackberries, jams, jellies, and elephant garlic vinegar, Mon/Wed/Fri/Sat |
| Bird + Bea's Farm Stand | Pungo | Rotating seasonal produce plus prepared lunches and dinners built from what came out of the ground that week |
| New Earth Farm | Pungo | Working educational farm, not a drive-through stand, worth knowing about if you have kids |
Two practical notes the guides leave out. First, Brookdale's hours depend on the picking. Their own listing says the fields close early if they get picked out that day, which happens more than you would think in July. Call ahead or check their Facebook page in the morning. Second, Cullipher grows the Chandler variety of strawberry along with Ruby June, which matters in May but not now. What matters in July at Cullipher is the ice cream window and the pre-picked table.
The CSA quietly changing what "buying local" means here
Alongside the roadside stand model, a small pesticide-free CSA has been building a different kind of Pungo food economy. Pungo Farm, run by JC and Jodi in the Back Bay corridor, sells 96% of its produce through its CSA rather than a stand. The 2026 summer share runs April 8 through November 20, with a four-week break in August while the farm transitions crops, at $38 per week. Summer 2026 memberships are already full, with a waitlist open for 2027.
If you are a resident who has been driving past that "Full Summer CSA, week 13 of 29" sign and wondering what it is, that is the answer. It is a different bet than the roadside model. You commit at the beginning of the season, you eat what the farm harvests that week, and you pick up at one of four spots across Virginia Beach and Chesapeake. It is also a small window into a broader shift, which is that some Pungo growers are moving away from the seasonal tourist economy entirely and building year-round subscription relationships with residents.
The winter Pungo Farm season runs November 25, 2026 through April 7, 2027, twenty weeks, $725 in full or $152 a month, with pickup at the farm in Back Bay. That is the sign-up window worth knowing about right now if you have been curious.
The first Saturday, and why it is the one day the pattern breaks
Every farm-stand routine in Pungo bends around the first Saturday of the month, when the Pungo Roots Market sets up at the corner of Indian River and Princess Anne, across from the red barn. Vendors, live music, food, flowers, and pick-your-own strawberries in season. In July that means the market is running while the surrounding u-pick farms are pushing blueberries, which turns the intersection into the closest thing Pungo has to a downtown for a few hours.
If you are new to the area, this is the single easiest way to meet the growers whose stands you have been driving past all year. If you have been here a while, you already know to get there before 10.
Where the loop should end
A Saturday morning in the fields is a self-defeating exercise if it ends in a fast-food drive-through on the way home. Three anchor stops locals actually use:
- The Bee & The Biscuit, 1785 Princess Anne Road, in a 1919 cottage at the main Pungo intersection. Breakfast and lunch built around local produce, open 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday, closed Monday. This is the one to hit before the fields, not after, because they stop serving at 2.
- Shorebreak Pizza & Taphouse, the Pungo location, for a later lunch or a beer after the buckets are in the car. The Pungo Shorebreak Run Club uses it as their monthly meetup point, which tells you something about who is inside on any given weeknight.
- Margie & Ray's or Pungo Pizza if you want the seasoned local answer to "where do I actually eat out here." The she-crab soup at either shows up in every honest recommendation thread.
For an afternoon that is not another meal, the Military Aviation Museum on Princess Anne keeps its WWI and WWII airframes flyable, and it is a five-minute detour from most of the u-pick farms. Little Island Park in Sandbridge is the natural place to end a morning if the kids still have energy, with the pier, the beach, and enough parking to make it work.
The point most guides miss
Pungo covers 23,000 acres. It is one of the last real farming areas inside the Virginia Beach city limits, and the reason so many of these stands are still standing is that the families running them have been at it for generations. The Burns family started Pungo Blueberries Etc. in 1980 after being told blueberries would not grow here. Flanagan Farm sits on soil that has been in the same family for four generations. Cullipher started as a roadside table.
What that means for anyone who actually lives out here is that the farm-stand economy is not a weekend novelty. It is the backbone of what makes Pungo different from every other zip code in the city, and it runs on a schedule that rewards residents who learn it.
If you own a home in Pungo, Ashville Park, Heritage Park, or one of the neighborhoods threaded between the fields, and you are thinking about what your property looks like to the next generation of buyers who will be drawn to exactly this rhythm, Sandbridge Life Realty Group has spent decades helping owners in southern Virginia Beach make those decisions well. Get in touch when you are ready to talk.
