We’ve had a long Strawberry season this year, but this week probably marks its conclusion. The phrase that comes to mind for me is “It could have been a contender” — for the best ever. It started early with lots of promise, but experienced several setbacks: multiple periods of unseasonal wet weather followed by a potentially season-ending “injury” from a major wind event. The recovery took several weeks while the plants grew new leaves and started flowering again. Finally this week, the berries are back on their A game, producing more fruit than they have in weeks — and it’s very tasty. But the timing coudn’t have been worse. We are right on the verge of a major heatwave and Red Flag wind event that will very likely knock the plants completely out of commission.
Our farm in Winters is not an ideal location for growing strawberries: it’s too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. Most years, the berries are a break-even proposition for us. They provide cash flow for us and enjoyment for CSA subscribers at a time of year when few other crops are producing. And because we plant them in the fall before the rainy season begins, we know we will always have them. We never know how long the season will last or when exactly it will end, but do know that it will end when our first summer heatwave unfolds. Once temperatures reach 100 degrees, the leaves wilt in the hot sun, the berries start to shrivel and dry up, and the plants stop producing flowers.
If our first heatwave arrives in early or mid May, the strawberries can break our hearts — especially if the season starts late. We’ve had berry seasons that only lasted three weeks. And if it’s a cool spring that delays the arrival of our summer crops, the berries can be a life-saver. This year is neither of those extremes. But with our tomatoes getting an early start this year, it’s a been a struggle some days to get both them and the berries picked. The heat that is set to arrive today will dramatically speed the ripening of the tomatoes, as well as shorten the window of time each day that we can harvest them. So even if the strawberries were more resistant to hot weather, we simply wouldn’t have time to get everything picked and into the cooler each day before it gets too hot.
If it doesn’t get too hot, and if the wind this week isn’t too strong, the berry field might survive and we will continue to harvest for another week or two. We’ll give it our best try, irrigating it every day during the heat. But the forecast does not look good. Since this is likely the last week you’ll see them, we’ve sent everyone two baskets of berries as a way of saying “farewell” to the season. If we had picked everything in the field, we could have sent four. The berries are big, beautiful and tasty.
And while this may be the last week of the 2025-2026 Strawberry harvest season at Terra Firma, our work as strawberry growers never really ends. While the crew was harvesting berries yesterday, I was planting the legume cover crop in the field where we will be planting next year’s berries on Labor Day. That leguminous crop will grow for 60 days before we plow under before preparing the field. And we will also face the task of removing this year’s plants, whose roots are now intertwined with the drip irrigation after growing in the same spot for over nine months — and preparing the field for a different crop.
We hope you have enjoyed the bounty of this year’s berry season.
Thanks,