Strawberry Season

It's officially strawberry season again.  We took our first strawberries to the markets on May 31 and June 2.  Farmer Bill opened his strawberry patch to pickers on June 5.  This is about the earliest we've ever opened.  The strawberry crop looks good this year, mostly.  There is some frost damage in the upper field, and the early variety - Wendy - really isn't working out.  There just doesn't seem to be a really good early strawberry variety.  Farmer Bill used to grow Annapolis as his early variety.  It is good tasting and does well for size, but doesn't get sweet until it's very ripe, so if you let the field get ripe, the mid-season berries are ready to pick... and you've lost your advantage of having an early variety.

The apple crop is mostly non-existent for 2012.  We had incredible, record-setting warm weather in March, which woke the trees up and got them blooming early.  Then April came in with normal April weather and the blossoms froze.  It looks like we'll have 5-10% of the normal crop of apples.  There will be, almost literally, a few of everything, but not very many of anything.

Other crops will have to take up some of the slack - there are an awful lot of cantaloupes and watermelons planted this year.  Both hoop houses are full of tomatoes - grape tomatoes in one and slicers in the other.  The hope is that Farmer Bill will have some of the earliest tomatoes that bring the best prices.  There is also a LOT of sweet corn planted (and more plantings being planned, I'm sure - Farmer Bill knows better than to tell me how much sweet corn he's growing).

The raspberries look really good this year.  They are covered in berry buds now & I expect them to start turning red any time (actually I've eaten a few almost-ripe raspberries).  We'll definitely start picking them early - maybe as much as 2 weeks early.  Farmer Bill is hoping to do well with the raspberries this year - partly to help make up for the apples, partly because it's time for the raspberries to start pulling their weight & producing some income.

It was a busy day today at the strawberry patch.  Our picking crew worked hard for 4 hours picking several hundred pounds of strawberries that were almost all sold by the time we closed at 2:00.  The PYO operation was steadily busy, too.  We're still in the beginning stage of picking, which means that the berries are a bit larger, but further between.  Next week there will be more clusters of berries, and that's when the PYO customers are really happy.  A huge part of Farmer Bill's job is to manage the customers' expectations & keep them happily toiling on their knees through the strawberries.  He's really good at it.