Strawberry farmers say wacky Wisconsin weather has made this the best strawberry season in years
LODI, Wis. — While many of us have been complaining about how cold the winter was or how rainy this summer has been, strawberry farmers say this has been their best season yet.
As strawberry season comes to a close this Sunday, things are pretty sweet at the Furger Family Farm.
“We’ve had a lot of rain, but it’s been the best season in years,” said Furger Family Farm owner, Jim Furger.
While many other types of farmers say the cold and wet seasons negatively impact their product, Furger said it’s helped him and other strawberry farmers.
“Strawberries are very shallow rooted plants so the roots only pick up the first couple inches of moisture in the soil,” Furger said.
Since the strawberries only intake a certain amount of moisture from the soil, they are never over-watered.
Even the brutally cold winter, the snow on the ground actually kept the berries warm enough when temperatures plummeted well below zero.
“It killed off a lot of the bugs, it killed off a lot of disease,” Furger said. “We also had a really nice snow cover when it was extremely cold, which prevented the plants from freezing out.”
It takes an entire year for strawberry farmers to be able to harvest berries, only for the berry picking season to last a mere three weeks before they start the process all over again.
Furger said at his small family farm in Lodi, he saw about 800 people come by to pick fresh strawberries.
“When you bite through it, it’s perfectly red all the way through,” Furger said. “The ones you buy in the store, you’ll bite into it, and they’ve got like a white center. Those are engineered for shipping. Our strawberries, if you tried to ship them many miles, they wouldn’t hold up. Our strawberries don’t have any preservatives in them.”
These strawberries from the Furger Family Farm are SO good… and we have the wacky Wisconsin weather to thank. While you and I were complaining about how cold winter was and how rainy its been so far this year, strawberry farmers say this has been the best season in years. pic.twitter.com/tRRzECajU2
— Jamie Perez (@JamiePerezTV) July 3, 2019
Some farms around the state ended their strawberry picking season Wednesday. Some are open through the weekend. If you are planning on making a trip to pick your own berries, check online for the farm’s hours of business to make sure they’re open. Otherwise, you may have to wait until next year.
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