My father was usually a pretty serious guy, but he had a prankster’s sense of humor. Every once in a while, my brother and I would be outside playing or working, and he would throw a bucket of water off the deck or spray us with the hose from behind the shrubs. My mom didn’t think it was funny at all when he did it to her, even if it was a hot day.
For the last three weeks, “Father March” has been playing a grand joke on us by offering hot, sunny days that have been tying or breaking records all over California as well as other states. If you’ve found yourself thinking that we somehow skipped a month or two and ended up in May of 2026 already, you’re not the only one. Meanwhile, we haven’t had a single day of rain so far. If that trend continues for six more days, we’ll achieve another dubious record: The first entirely dry March in fifty years or more, depending on your location.
On the farm, the hot temperatures have been a mixed blessing. Most of our crops seem to be enjoying it, and with the exception of a few days that were excessively hot, it’s been relatively pleasant to work in. Our tomatoes are growing faster than I’ve ever seen in March, and our summer fruit trees are easily two weeks ahead of schedule. The dry conditions have enabled us to get a head start on preparing the ground for spring planting, mowing and plowing under cover crops.
Out of everything we grow, the strawberries like hot weather the least. While they were enjoying the warmer-than-normal weather earlier in the month, they got ahead of themselves a bit by putting out far more fruit than they had leaves to protect. Those tender, green fruit were still exposed to the sun last week during the hottest weather, and we started to see some of them getting sunburned — cooked. Happily, over the weekend the plants rallied with quite a bit of leaf growth. We picked the first few baskets of ripe fruit on Monday — just enough for the lucky Large box subscribers.
We are expecting Strawberry ripening to ramp up quickly towards the end of the week and into weekend. But the weather is about to play yet another trick on us, just in time for April Fools’ Day: the first storm we’ve had in a month. That storm looks to bring a decent shot of rain over three or even four days along with temperatures that are not unusually cold for this time of year but which will feel very chilly compared to what we’ve had in March.
Since the berries don’t like hot weather, they’re sure to enjoy the cool, rainy weather — right? Not really. A few hours of drizzle or a quick shower won’t cause problems, but a sustained rain event will leave the ripening berries sitting in puddles and splashed with mud. Those berries will quickly rot, and there is so much fruit on the plants right now that it’s very possible we’ll see mold spread. If it rains at night and the sun comes out during the day, the spoilage may be limited, but if the plants and fruit stay wet for a full day or longer, we could lose most of the week’s harvest.
On the plus side, strawberries fruit continuously during the season — unlike tree fruit which make only one crop. So as long as the rain doesn’t continue all month — which I don’t expect it to — we’ll have plenty more. And it’s far better for the weather return to “normal” Spring conditions than for it to stay hot like it has been. We had been worrying quite a bit that April would be bringing 100 degree temperatures, which would mean a greatly shortened berry season.
If next week’s forecast verifies, it will be challenging for us to get everything harvested for your CSA boxes, not just the berries but the other crops that we have in the fields. We’ll do our best, but April might throw a bucket of cold water on our plans.
Thanks,