Strawberries are nearly synonymous with summer in Metro Vancouver, as the ripe red fruit marks the start of warmer weather in the region — but this year's crop has left something to be desired.
Located in the heart of the Fraser Valley, Maan Farms offers a range of popular events year-round. One of the biggest draws to the sprawling acreage is their seasonal picking events, which include the massively popular pumpkin patch.
But half of fall 2021's orange offering was cut in half due to a mass die-off. While the farm wasn't able to confirm why it happened, the farm feels extreme temperatures seen in July’s heat wave sped up the pumpkin’s ripening cycle too soon and recent heavy rains saturated them.
Operations Manager Amir Maan tells Vancouver Is Awesome in a phone interview that the family has never had a strawberry season like this one before.
In a video he shared on social media, he walks through a muddy strawberry field complete with puddles galore. The frustrated farmer remarks, "It's June...it's insane. We've never had a season like this before and people are always asking me, 'When the heck is the strawberry season?
"It's not normal!" he exclaims, as he bends down to point out some unseasonably unripened fruit in the bushes below him.
Vancouver strawberries: Extending the season with greenhouses
Once a booming business in the Fraser Valley with about 50 growers, Maan says unfavourable strawberry growing conditions and stiff competition with Californian imports have caused that number to drop down to between five and 10 local producers.
"When you have cool weather in stages of the plant cycle, such as during the flowering phase it can ruin the fruit," says Maan. "This year, we had frost when the strawberry fruit was flowering.
"We also had a lot of rain damage; it was a double whammy."
But while many farms are bearing the brunt of "Juneuary" in the Lower Mainland, Maan Farms has found a creative alternative to unreliable returns on their strawberry farming investments: a greenhouse.
Maan farms have 20 to 25 acres worth of strawberries on the property, but only seven to eight of these are marketable acres. And while the new greenhouse is roughly two-and-a-half acres big, the strawberries are grown vertically, yielding more fruit.
"The greenhouse allows us to provide berries when no one else does," notes Maan, adding that many stores are seeing a big decrease in sales because they aren't offering the summer fruit.
The local farmer says their strawberry "u-pick" event sells out quickly, adding that there are really only a few weeks left in the season.
Thanks to the new greenhouse, however, the Fraser Valley farm may provide fresh B.C. berries until September.
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