From the Times Picayune:
When Pontchatoula grower Eric Morrow checked on his strawberries this morning, the results were not good.
“I’d say 95 percent of the blooms are gone, but our crowns (buds, which have yet to bloom) are looking okay,” said Morrow, an eighth-generation Pontchatoula farmer who has kept his 13-acre strawberry crop covered under a synthetic blanket for the past 10 days.
“This is about the longest consecutive cold I’ve seen, so it’s pretty tough,” he said.
It it wasn’t for the blanket, Morrow guesses he would have lost his crowns, too. Temperatures in Ponchatoula got down to 21 degrees Sunday night and are expected to reach below freezing throughout much of the north shore again this evening. The mass of cold air that has been hovering over southeastern Louisiana is expected to lift on Wednesday.
Area growers hope their crops can hold on until then.
Sandra Benjamin, Tangipahoa Parish agent for the LSU AgCenter, said, “They all had bloom damage so that will set the harvest back some.”
When the strawberries do grow back, farmers think they will produce more fruit, but “We just have to wait and see,” Benjamin said.
Morrow said the recent freeze will delay the next harvest by a few weeks, until around Valentine’s Day, when the crop is typically in high demand. Not bad timing, considering.
“Give us about a month and we’ll be pretty strong,” Morrow said.
I actually live in Ponchatoula. It was 28 last night, and is expected to be so again tonight (Tuesday). I will confess that I don’t know any strawberry farmers, but do know that it is a dying industry in the area. I used to know of two strawberry farms. They have both closed, and now I couldn’t even tell you where a working one is.
My house is in a 20 year old development that was a 300 acre strawberry farm on the southeast side of town. The elderly widow(she is 89)who lives behind me owned the property, and just sold another 150 acres last year. She and her husband farmed the family land until sometime the 1970′s (she told me, but I can’t remember the exact years), and then slowly cut back on how much land they cultivated each year working themselves into retirement. They tried to sell the land complete as a farm in the early 1980′s, but couldn’t find a buyer. So they looked for other uses for the land. That has happened a lot around here recently. From what I have been told, they just can’t compete on price nationally with the mega farms in California. Even in Ponchatoula, most of the berries on store shelves are from CA.
WFTNS, are you telling me that in February-March all those cheap flats of strawberries you can get around there are not local? From produce stands and the like?
NMC, The produce stands and from the backs of trucks, yes, that is most likely local. I am talking about grocery stores. The bulk of what the local Winn-Dixie, and even the AG store, carry are CA. I also know first hand that much of the prepared food you get at the festival is made from CA strawberries. The booth owners/sponsors can’t buy enough from the local farmers who would rather sell flats to the festival goers.
NMC, By the way, the local feed & seed here sells the seedlings in fall. I think I have seen that you grow some of your own produce. My father-in-law plants about 40 plants every year in his back yard in Metairie and says they are not hard to grow. Maybe you should get your daughter to pick some up and give them a shot.
I grow herbs and have only rarely grown vegetables, which is some sort of personal failing. I do grow blueberries with great success.
I’d have expected Krogers and the like to import cardboard strawberries into the land of fresh-strawberry-plenty, just as they do with plastic tomatoes and flavorless blueberries into North Mississippi in June. Excellent strawberries are grown in these parts– the area around Thaxton (between Pontotoc and Oxford) has had strawberry farms out there off and on for years, and the Bosts grow really good ones. Part of the deal on the ones around your area is they are so much a first-sign-of-Spring thing: Look! flats of Louisiana strawberries!– and the shear plenitude. Too bad the festival doesn’t produce local berry prepared foods, because it would I suspect make a big difference (the Sweet Potato shop in Vardaman would I think close rather than use “imported” ‘taters for the festival there, given its ownership in families that are a potato farmer and the largest potato shed facility in town).
It would make a big difference. The local berries are much darker red and much sweeter than the CA berries. I won’t buy, as you say, the cardboard berries for my own use. Like I said, the problem is access. The farmers don’t want to sell their entire crop to the people making food at the festival when they can make much more money selling flats to tourist. Crap NMC, you got me thinking about the strawberry beignets at the local breakfast place and the strawberry shortcake my wife makes. I am going to be hungry for the rest of the afternoon.
Good news NMC:
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/82185047.html
You may have to wait, but they will be there.
[...] Strawberries: Survived the Freeze I posted earlier about the freeze, worrying about its affect on the strawberry crop in Louisiana. [...]