Strawberry 2026 Wrap-Up

Our strawberry u-pick season is finished for 2o26.

Thank you all!  Everyone who visited was lovely.  We appreciate how much you value organic berries. 

2027 organic berries.

We will be back with more Certified Organic berries in 2027.  We planted a fresh strawberry field this spring, and will renovate one of this year’s fields.  That will give us two Certified Organic u-pick fields in 2027.  First, let’s review how this year progressed.

An interesting year.

We’ve grown organic strawberries for decades yet there are still surprises.  Overall, we were thrilled to have strawberries despite challenging weather.

Left; Strawberry leaves and blossoms coated in ice after a night of irrigation to protect against frost. Right; Beautiful, healthy blossoms after a frosty night.

Strawberry blossoms are easily damaged by frost. Each year, we expect to protect the buds by irrigating overnight.  As ice forms, it holds the flowers safely at 32 F.  This season, we had to irrigate for NINE nights.  This sets a record for us.  It was definitely worth the effort – the flowers survived those night beautifully.

King berry

We tried a new pruning technique last year that gave us enormous berries in one field.  That was cool!  Unfortunately, we discovered that those big berries were the most vulnerable to heavy rains!  The berries looked good through two storms but the third storm was too much.  We’ll adjust next year.  Fortunately, the plants set another round of berries and we were able to pick that field again.

Good Picking!

There were excellent picking days.

It’s fun to visit the farm in nice weather.

This is Simone (on tractor), Ken, Steve and me planting a fresh field of strawberries. It will be ready to pick in 2027!