Summer Is Coming! The Low Down on Our Strawberries

As we said back in January, 2015 is a huge year for us! So far we have announced we would be producing Black Raspberries, Aronia Berries, and now we proudly announce we will be offering a 
U-Pick field of Strawberries in the summer of 2016. 

We really like having strawberries, but we were running into a problem of having an over abundance of product in the field. Meaning we were unable to pick all of the fruit out there, and that means we were loosing money. So we went and put our thinking caps on, after some time we came up with this idea:

We will be opening a U-Pick Strawberry Patch!

How exciting? We will have not only U-Pick Blueberries but also U-Pick Strawberries. We are thrilled to finally be able to do what so many of you have been asking for in providing a certified organic U-Pick Strawberry patch. 

Now, here's the bad news, we need time to get our act together, and get the plants going. So we will not have strawberries this summer, instead we will be opening our Strawberry U-Pick in the summer of 2016. We will continue to have U-Pick Blueberries. 

If your wondering where exactly we will be putting our U-Pick Strawberries in at, and if your familiar with our farm, you might have noticed that we have moved the majority of where we make our compost to a different section of our farm, and that field is now bare. This is where we will be putting our U-Pick Strawberries. It is right across from our U-Pick Blueberry field, how perfect?! 

Over the next year we have quite a bit of work to do, we need to prep our soil and get it up to our standards (it's already been certified organic since we made our certified organic compost there), and most importantly we need to plant the strawberry plants! We have already placed our order for the plants and we are happy to announce the variety we will have are Bentons. 

Benton strawberry plant is a Junebearing cultivar, named after Benton County where Oregon State University is located in Corvallis, Oregon.  Fruit is very bright, has excellent keeping quality, is conic in shape, and the has good flavor. Fruit is medium to large in size and is recommended for all parts of the Pacific Northwest. Benton appears to have excellent winter hardiness and excellent fruit quality with vigorous growth. 

The upright habit makes Benton a good bet for home gardeners as well as the commercial grower. It is more drought resistant than Rainier strawberry plants. Virus tolerant. Also tolerant to red stele. Ripens late.

As we make progress and go along on our new venture we will be posting photos and up dates, so keep your eye out for it all. It's sure to be exciting! 

We would like to thank all of our customers over the years for supporting our farm and all our additions we have added since 2006. Adding blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries was a risk, but meeting such a warm response has allowed us to make additional improvements and to grow as a farm.