California Strawberries

Interested in the strawberries that are for sale at your grocery store? Check out this article: A Strawberry's Journey (Toronto Star, June 21, 2009) It's a fascinating read (there's a video too) about California strawberry farming, and how they get from the field to your plate.

Wendy's parents grew up in California, and over the years we've been out many many times visiting her relatives in the Sierra Nevadas and the Monterey Bay area. Ahhhh....the ocean, the surfer dudes in Santa Cruz, fisherman's wharf, Big Sur, deep fried artichokes, authentic burritos....and of course Watsonville, the strawberry capital of the world. Needless to say we are very interested in California strawberries.

The photo is from our vacation in 1994, taken near Watsonville, just off Highway 1

Watsonville is a great place to grow strawberries -great soil, excellent supply of water, and a great climate -I remember Wendy's grandfather saying it was the perfect place to live: It never got cold in winter, so you didn't need a furnace, and it never got too hot in summer, so you didn't need air conditioning!

It's tough being an Ontario berry grower competing with California. California berries are big, look fantastic, and I know we like to complain about their flavour, but a California berry picked in June tastes pretty good. It's those berries picked in March, and the winter Florida berries which have a flavour and texture problem.

Strawberries are way cheaper to grow in California -their season is longer, yield is more than 10 times ours, and they have cheaper labour costs. We also have huge costs protecting our berries from the extreme cold of our winters. You might think that transporting strawberries all the way from California would cost a lot. The environmental cost of all those trucks carrying berries to market is certainly high, but the cost where it counts -the price you pay at the store, is only a few pennies per box.

Methyl Bromide is great at clearing soil of all pathogens such as nematodes, bacteria, fungi, weeds, etc. Believe me, if we had used Methyl Bromide on our field last year, our berries would have been so much better this year. Banned globally because it destroys the ozone layer, we can't use it; however, California is exempt from the ban, so once again advantage California, disadvantage Ontario berry grower, disadvantage planet Earth.

If the truth is to be known, I'd love to go and pick my own strawberries in Watsonville....ahhhh....wake up to the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean at the Monterey Beach Resort, drive 45 mins up the coast to Santa Cruz where the kids (of all ages) can ride the carousel (Alexander and Rebecca are fifth generation riders of that merry-go-round in our family), a 15 minute drive to the berry fields, not enough time to pick, so we'll just buy (we always spend too much time playing in the ocean), Cioppino for dinner at Phil's in Moss Landing....okay I'm leaving tomorrow!