Strawberries are ready to be picked, but where are the pickers? Blame rain, laziness or lack of time, but the pick-your-own market isn’t what it used to be.
Eric Sideman of Ridgeside Farm in Greene, a certified organic farm with about one-half acre of strawberries, said he’s got one of the best crops ever despite heavy rainfalls. He credits his sandy soil, which allows the rainwater to drain.
“We’ve had more rain than we need, but it hasn’t hurt us any,” he said. “This is the cleanest, biggest crop I’ve had in 15 years, but we need people to come pick them.”
The weather is primarily responsible for keeping people home, said David Handley, a small fruit specialist with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
“We’ve had rainy weekends, and that’s when the growers need people to pick,” he said. “July 4th is the peak of the picking season for the midstate area. If we have a rainy July 4 weekend, it hurts a lot.”
On Tuesday at David Pike’s commercial strawberry farm in Farmington, plants were loaded with ripe, red strawberries ready for the picking.
“In spite of the weather conditions, this is one of the best crops we’ve seen,” he said. “But at the moment it looks like I’ll lose 50 percent of my strawberries because they are not getting picked.”
Pike’s wholesale orders and prepicked strawberries that he sells at a stand on Route 4 are doing well and are a dependable source of income.
“We used to be 30 percent retail and 70 percent pick your own. Now we’re 70 percent retail and 30 percent pick your own.”
Ford Stevenson in Wayne has about 12 acres open for strawberry picking. Stevenson’s Strawberries opened to the public Friday, June 23, and he and his workers were picking almost a week before that. He said average opening day is June 25 for him.
Stevenson said pickers are coming but they aren’t picking as many berries as they used to.
“Before, a family would come and pick a whole bunch of them and then put them up and can and freeze them,” he said. “People don’t do a whole lot of that anymore.”
Steve Verrill of Verrill’s Vegetable Stand in Poland opened his small pick-your-own operation last Wednesday, and locals have turned out to harvest the fruit. He has about 10 acres of crops, including 1½ acres of strawberries.
“We’ve been pretty lucky so far,” he said Tuesday. “We’ve had days like today when we thought it was going to rain, but it turned out to be a pretty decent day and the people have come.”
While he has seen a lot of rain on his farm, his property is on a hill, which allows it to drain.
“The strawberries get ripe just the same. They like the rain,” he said, adding that all his crops have done “surprisingly well. The secret is to get them planted when it’s dry.”
Handley said many berry farms have been hit hard by the rain.
“Picking just got under way for a lot of them,” said Handley, adding that the normal strawberry season in Maine starts in the second week of June and ends in the second to third week in July.
“Some places with well-drained soil are OK,” he said. “In other places, the water is tending to puddle and then you have a fruit rot problem. Southern Maine has had more trouble because of all the rain there, but as you move north it’s not too, too bad. The strawberries need rain.”
He said most strawberry farms are doing especially well after the winter Maine had.
“There was no snow cover, and the poor plants were just sitting out there, and the temperature went up and down. That’s terribly hard on the plants, but they came out of it, and most are doing all right.”
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