Weather patterns leave berry season uncertain

The key this year? Location, location, location

Tuesday, May 23, 2006  - Bangor Daily News

Sharon Kiley Mack
©2006 Bangor Daily News, used with permission.

SANGERVILLE - Maine's strawberry growers have weathered a record-breaking wet fall, a mostly snowless winter and deluges this spring.

The result may be far fewer berries this season.

At Stutzman's Farm, the assessment of this season's strawberries depends on which field is scrutinized. One acre-and-a-half field, covered with plastic sheeting all winter, already has produced green berries and is thriving.

"We are going to be two to two and a half weeks ahead of schedule on that field," Rainie Stutzman said Monday.

But staying ahead has costs: the Stutzmans have repeatedly been up all night irrigating to prevent frost from killing the berries.

Now turn your head and look at a neighboring field covered with traditional straw and you find a completely different story. "It's not doing as well. We experienced a lot of winter kill," Stutzman said.

The lack of snow cover this winter has taken a toll on Maine's summer strawberry crop, but the level of damage has a lot to do with location.

Jodie Booth of The Strawberry Ranch in Palmyra - who put in 3,000 new strawberry plants last year - said Monday that she was completely unaffected by winter kill.

"We have blossoms already, and the season looks like it will be a bit early," Booth said. Booth replaced winter snow cover with a heavy layer of straw, insulating the plants and their sensitive root systems.

In southern Maine, Bill Spiller of Spiller Farm in Wells watched earlier this month as days of record rainfall flooded his fields.

"It's really, really wet out there, but so far the berries are all right," Spiller said Monday. "The problem with so much water is it promotes disease. We won't know if we're affected for a couple more weeks."

"Strawberries are not particularly hardy," David Handley, a small-fruit-and-vegetable expert with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, said Monday. "The plants succeed in Maine because we normally have a good snow cover.

"Due to the lack of snow this winter, we are seeing winter injury across the state, ranging from very light to heavy. As a result, I expect this year's crop of berries to be lighter than usual."

Handley advised customers to watch their local strawberry farms closely, and as soon as the berries are ripe to get out into the fields.

Cranberry Harvest Down, But Growers Still Have Reason
to Be Thankful

Thursday, November 10, 2005 - Ellsworth American

 Tom Walsh
©2005 Ellsworth American, used with permission.

MILBRIDGE — With the approach of Thanksgiving, Downeast cranberry growers are thankful to see the price processors pay them for their harvest on the upswing.

“Prices are now in the range of 35 to 40 cents per pound, which is just about break-even for an efficient grower,” said Dean Bradshaw, whose four acres of cranberry bogs in Dennysville produced significantly higher yields this fall than last.

“My yields were up, but that was atypical,” said Bradshaw, who is secretary of the Maine Cranberry Growers Association. “Some producers west of here had very poor yields.”

Charles Armstrong, the University of Maine Extension Service’s cranberry professional, said he expects Maine’s 2005 cranberry crop to be around 16 million pounds, down from 20 million pounds a year ago.

“Cold and wet weather during pollination was definitely to blame,” Armstrong said. “Not only did that affect the amount of fruit produced, but it resulted in a reduction in the size of the berries that were produced.”

Compared to wild blueberries, cranberry cultivation is not a big business in Maine. In 2004, the state’s 32 growers harvested just over 2 million pounds of cranberries on 225 acres. That compares with 46 million pounds of blueberries harvested statewide in 2004 on 60,000 acres.

While Maine’s annual harvest accounts for virtually all the wild blueberries grown commercially in the United States, most domestic cranberries come from Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Oregon and New Jersey.

Last year, Wisconsin growers alone produced 329 million pounds. That was nearly half of the cranberries harvested in the U.S.

Of the 2 million pounds grown in Maine in 2004, 1.6 million were harvested from 192 acres of bogs in Washington County.

At four acres, Bradshaw’s operation in Dennysville is larger than most cranberry bogs in Maine. Armstrong said the average size is two acres. With 111 acres, Canadian-owned Cherryfield Foods in Cherryfield is Maine’s largest cranberry grower. The next largest is the Passamaquody Tribe, which owns 19 acres of bogs managed by the Northeastern Blueberry Co. in Columbia Falls.

 In addition to buying cranberries harvested by Bradshaw and other small producers, Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge owns 16 acres of bogs located within its 7,000 acres of blueberry barrens in Deblois.

“We grow about one-third of the cranberries we process,” said Edward Flanagan, Wyman’s president and CEO. “We try to buy as many as we can from small growers, especially when yields are down, like this year.”

With reduced yields this fall, Flanagan said the company expects to pay growers 10 to 15 percent more per pound for this year’s harvest than the 35 cents per pound it paid them in 2004.

 “The big volume buyers, like Ocean Spray, set the price, and we keep our ear to the tracks to make sure our growers are getting that price, or a premium,” he said.

Flanagan said the quality and color of the cranberries his firm harvested this fall were the best he’s seen, but not the yield.

“We like to get 200 barrels (20,000 pounds) an acre, but we came up well short of that,” he said.

Both large and small cranberry growers have seen market prices vary widely over the past 10 years.

“The cranberry industry has gone through serious convulsion in terms of demand and supply problems,” Bradshaw said. “A federal government announcement that said cranberries prevented urinary tract infections and were good for health in general spiked demand. Prices went up as high as $1 a pound, and people began to grow more. Most of the Maine growers got in when prices were about 60 cents.”

By 1999, supply had exceeded demand to the point where prices paid to growers dropped as low as 12 cents a pound in some states. The rate was only slightly higher in Maine.

“There was a bit of a gold rush all over the world to get into cranberries, and we got into growing cranberries when it was hot,” Flanagan said. “But, by the time we got our first yields, the market had crashed.”

With this year’s prices inching toward 40 cents a pound, Flanagan sees a better balance of supply and demand.

“In terms of the future, one worry is what’s to become of the whole juice category, which has to account for 75 percent of the cranberry crop,” he said. “The juice business was very hot, but it’s not doing as well now because of the calorie content.

“After years of being considered a healthy alternative to soft drinks, consumers are critical of cranberry juice now because of the calories. While grocery store aisles used to be lined with juices, now it’s water, flavored water and carbonated water.”

Armstrong said small growers like Bradshaw are now getting $2 to $2.50 a pound for fresh cranberries, which are popular with consumers in planning holiday menus.

“That’s a significantly higher price than what’s paid for berries used by processors,” he said. “But, given the time and the labor involved, it’s really not an option if you have to harvest more than one acre.”

Below average blueberry crop estimated at 70 million pounds

Thursday, August 04, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

Katherine Cassidy

©2005 Bangor Daily News, used with permission.

Maine's growers of wild blueberries are bracing for another sub-par year, according to the industry's annual pre-harvest estimates.

If realized as predicted, the 2005 crop would fall about 13 percent below the 2003 final production, Miyares added.

Blueberry Pollination
Spring’s Chilly Weather Inhospitable for Bees

Tom Walsh
©2005 Ellsworth American, used with permission.

ELLSWORTH — To bee or not to bee?

That is the question Maine’s wild blueberry growers are now confronting as their fields begin to blossom.

“This is the time of year the growers are bringing in bees,” said David Yarborough, a University of Maine horticulturist and cooperative extension blueberry specialist. “What they need for good pollination weather are bright, sunny days without rain, cold or too much wind so the bees can work the blossoms.”

Hives housing potential pollinators await the season in an Orland field.

Blue areas indicate locations of major Downeast and Maritime Canada blueberry fields.
Photo by Tom Walsh

Growers who tend 60,000 acres of lowbush blueberries in Maine are coming off a winter that provided enough snow cover to insulate plants from damaging sub-zero temperatures.

Yarborough said growers who import bees for spring pollination could expect significantly higher yields than those who rely on native pollinators.

 “With native background pollinators, you can expect somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 pounds of berries per acre,” Yarborough said. “With good pollination weather and adequate moisture, those who bring in bees can expect anywhere from 4,000 to 8,000 pounds per acre.”

Many growers rent hives from “commercial pollinators” — beekeepers who bring hives to Maine from as far away as Texas and Florida. Hives aren’t placed in the fields until blueberry bushes are at 10-percent bloom to ensure that bees don’t fix on other blooming plants instead of the berry bushes.

Yarborough recommends densities of two to four hives per acre, which he said translates to one hive for each 1,000 pounds of production.

“Wild blueberry blossoms benefit from multiple visits by pollinators,” he said. “The more visits, the more pollen is deposited.

“The size of the fruit is not only determined by the amount of water you have, but also how well the fruit is pollinated.”

G.M. Allen & Son Inc. of Blue Hill began Monday placing 1,500 hives throughout its 1,000 acres of blueberry fields in Sedgwick and Penobscot.

“These bees are from Florida, and they don’t like the cold,” Paul Allen said Monday. “The bloom is coming, despite the weather, but the bees are staying put, poor devils.”

Allen said at $50 a hive, placement varies from one hive for every two acres to two hives per single acre.

“It’s an investment you’ve got to make if you want a crop,” he said.

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Weather puts farmers in bind
Thursday, June 16, 2005 - Bangor Daily News

Sharon Kiley Mack
©2005 Bangor Daily News, used with permission.

ORONO - Vegetable farmers and livestock producers who grow feed crops are starting to feel the effects of this spring's wacky weather. First it was too wet - weeks of rain saturated fields, rotted seeds already in the ground and then turned fields into quagmires that couldn't stand the weight of planting equipment.

Then it got too hot, frying young seedlings and pushing hay past its point of high quality.

Now it's rainy and cool again.

"If we got on the fields today, we could go steady for the next three weeks and maybe we could get caught up to where we would only be two weeks behind," Steve Wright of The Wright Place in Clinton said Wednesday.

The Wrights operate one of the largest dairy farms in the state, with more than 700 milking cows, and they rely on their ability to plant and harvest their own feed stocks.

Wright said the family has planted only one-third of its 400 acres of corn. "We haven't even started cutting the grass," he said.

Wright said the hay should have been cut last week. "We are still going to get the quantity, but the quality won't be there," he noted.

Farmers across the state are behind, and the deadline for planting is at hand.

"They are working right on the edge now," Joseph Cannon, farm manager at the University of Maine's Rogers Farm, said Wednesday. "They can still plant field corn, and it might make it, but it is certainly a gamble. We just need a little break in the weather."

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