Jana and I made our first dollar as fruit growers this past Monday. It was rather unexpected actually. Two weeks ago, we didn’t think it would be possible that the berries would be ready by our traditional opening on Memorial Day. It was still very cool, with highs struggling to get out of the 60’s, and the plants just wouldn’t stop blooming to grow. Two warm days changed that, and by last Friday I was thinking that maybe we needed to pick the field soon. By Sunday it was clear that we’d need to have a “soft” opening on Memorial day with just ready-pick berries.
Then just as we were finally ready to open the patch for pick-your-own on Tuesday, the heat wave hit. We went from cool cloudy weather to sunny and hot, and not just one day of sunny and hot, but five days of summer-like, humid, 90-degree Berumuda high pressure. It felt like peach season. I was amazed that people were tough enough to come out and pick in the hot sun.
Strawberries, at least the kind we grow around here, are a cool weather crop. When hit with this kind of heat, they don’t size properly and they go on defence – just trying NOT to turn to mush in the sun. Fortunately, we had a new field with irrigation. This helped, but it wasn’t the opening week I would have wanted. By Saturday afternoon, picking was getting hard and we were waiving our usual minimum charge.
I think most of you were happy with the berries we did have (and to be sure, there were lots of nice ones) but after all the work we’ve done out there, I was hoping for better.
Maybe it’s appropriate to have some missed expectations right off the bat. Even when we do everything to the best of our ability, things will go wrong in this business, and there is nothing – absolutely nothing – we can do about it. Rather than focus on those missed expectations, it is more constructive to look ahead.
Next week will be cooler, and thanks to the irrigation, our later variety plants look very healthy and should give us a good second wave of berries. At least, that’s my hope!
…Now if it would just rain…