Strawberry u-pick update

We plan to open the strawberry patch for the first u-pick picking of the season tomorrow morning (June 17,2023) @ 7 am. This is an unusual strawberry season. We had a 30 degree night about a month ago when the strawberries were just starting to bloom. This freeze damaged a lot of the earliest flowers. The berries that are ripening now are from the flowers that were open at that time that survived and set fruit. Right now I estimate that there are a few hundred quarts of ripe berries out there. They are fairly nice but expect to travel quite a lot of row for a fairly small harvest. Mondays picking will also be very light. There is a fairly large amount of very green berries on the plants that I estimate to be 7- 14 days out from ripening yet. There is almost nothing that is 3-5 days out on the plants so the next few pickings have little potential. There are still flowers also so it looks to me like this will be a very spread out strawberry year with potential to still be picking into early July. There will be very few or no prepicked berries to purchase at the farm stand tomorrow. I am delighted with this cooler rainy weather. The majority of the strawberry crop for this year is still very green and is being greatly benefited by the rain and cool. God’s rain is superior to mans irrigation. I have been growing strawberries in this area since 1998. This is our 25th year- a quarter of a century.

Hours for u-pick are Monday starting at 7 AM; Wednesday, starting 2 PM (no morning picking on Wednesdays); Saturday, start 7 AM. This repeats through out the whole season. The patch closes when the berries are all picked or at 6 PM. Daniel