Strawberry season is intense, relentless, and rife with potential. Opening for both morning and afternoon picking makes for very long days for Farmer Bill.
This year the picking season started 2 weeks later than last year. And looks like it will run only about 14-18 days. The river field, which would have been in its 2nd picking year, is gone. The 'new' field for this year -- the upper middle -- did not flourish. The berries there are small and thus the picking is slow. [Farmer Bill is talking about taking it out and starting over.] The lower middle field is very good, and the upper field by the house has been reasonable. So, with only one good field to pick, the operation will probably go to mornings only very soon. It will be a short season which means less income and less expense. The balance is hard to gauge at this point.
There are, however, a lot of raspberries ripening in the new raspberry patch. So that needs to be mowed, weeded (thistles to be pulled), and prepared for picking. Decisions about advertising for the raspberries need to be made & implemented.
Other crops, melons & sweet corn, are in the ground and if we get the warm, sunny days we've been promised this week, we could probably stand in the fields and watch them grow. They've been waiting anxiously for these conditions. I have no idea when to expect sweet corn this year -- it's been standing still in the field waiting for the rain to quit and the sun to come out. My guess is melons will be ready in mid-late August per usual. We're still waiting for our coolers in the store to be finished, but hope to be able to sell corn, melons and apples in the afternoons at the farm.
The apple crop may be our savior this year. It looks terrific right now. If we can remain a hail-free zone (and keep the apple maggot population down), we'll have a very nice crop of apples to sell.
No comments:
Post a Comment