Across the region, farmers are seeing red like never before.
"We're not even ready," said Carolyn Lilley, who manages her family's strawberry fields in Chesapeake and Suffolk. "Everything is ripening right in front of our eyes. All these berries!"
Southeastern Virginia farmers produce the bulk of the state's $7 million strawberry crop. Usually, the 50 acres of local U-pick fields open to the public in late April, but not this year. Many fields opened this week, and a few farmers sounded the call even earlier.
"This never, never, never happens," said Robbie Vaughan, who grows four varieties of berries on the Pungo farm that has been in his family for more than three centuries. "If someone had told me I'd have strawberries ready on Easter Sunday, I'd have said, 'There's no way possible.' "
But the early season has some farmers worried that perfectly ripened berries will rot on the ground because Tidewater residents are programmed to migrate to the fields around Mother's Day.
On Wednesday, about a dozen pickers bent over rows at the Flip Flop Farmer fields in Pungo, plunking crimson berries into plastic buckets and occasionally sampling the crop.
"We've been busy for the first of April, but not May busy," said Bruce Henley, the Flip Flop Farmer.
Perennial picker Nancy Hubbard was among the early birds. Wednesday marked her second day in the patch of Sweet Charlie berries, the earliest variety to ripen.
"They're awesome; they're all perfect," said the Virginia Beach resident, whose berries were destined for jam.
Henley even opened a few rows for picking in late March, an unheard-of feat that he accomplished by covering a swath of Sweet Charlies with immense lengths of a dryer-sheet-like fabric that allows sunlight to penetrate but traps moisture and heat.
He's also experimenting with a newer variety, Albion, which could extend the local season beyond June and into July, even August. Clusters of massive, perfectly shaped Albions were just starting to ripen, and Henley invited pickers to have a taste.
By next week, the Sweet Charlies are expected to give way to the Chandlers, a bigger berry that makes up the bulk of the local crop. Henley's father, Wink Henley, 72, the most veteran of the Virginia Beach strawberry farmers, bent down to inspect some Chandlers in his Virginia Beach field. He, too, is in awe of the season.
"I think this year is going to be first-class," he said. "If nothing happens to them."
Barring a late frost, hail or torrential rain, Bruce Henley agreed: "It's going to be one of those years when you say, 'Remember that year...?' "
Source:
By Lorraine Eaton
The Virginian-Pilot
© April 12, 2012
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