LEWISTON — Ready the shortcake. This year’s strawberry crop is ripe, sweet and early.

The biggest question facing growers seems to be ensuring that enough people know that the strawberries are ready for picking.

“We probably won’t make it to July 4,” said Kate Brennan of Ridgeview Farm in Greene. “We’ve been picking for more than a week and a half.”

On the other side of the county in Poland, the strawberries were a week or more early, said Steve Verrill of Verrill’s Vegetable Stand.

It’s been a strange season for the popular crop, said Tori Jackson, an educator for agriculture and natural resources with the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension office in Lisbon.

Warm weather and sun led the strawberries to mature quicker than usual, Jackson said. Then, just as many plants had begun to blossom, a particularly hard frost killed as much as 25 to 30 percent of the area’s strawberries.

For many farms, the fruit is a big revenue crop, particularly with the people who visit farms and pick their own.

Doug Chipman of Chipman’s in Poland was watching the forecasts last month when meteorologists warned of the coming cold snap.

He readied his irrigation equipment and sprayed his fields in Poland and Minot with water. “I stayed with them all night,” Chipman said.

His work that night included spraying his plants to create a film of water to insulate them from the cold. “We didn’t lose many,” he said.

Since then, the weather has been almost ideal, with lots of sun and warm-but-not-too-steamy weather. If the heat is too intense, the berries can ripen too quickly.

And this June has had few extended stretches of rain.

“You can get five or six days of rain in a row and they can spoil,” Chipman said.

If the trend continues, pickers ought to have a little extra time to get to the berries. The agreeable weather has spawned a particularly sweet crop, he said.

Brennan agreed.

“This year’s berries taste wonderful,” she said.

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