Wanted: Strawberry pickers in Virginia Beach
The merry month of May hasn’t been very merry for Virginia Beach’s strawberries. The problem: Rainy weather is keeping pickers at home, and the ripe, red fruit needs them.
Mother’s Day, which usually brings throngs of families to the pick-your-own-strawberries farms in the city’s southern end, whipped up a wet and windy storm that stuck around for a week.
Then the sun rallied last weekend to sweeten the juicy berries, but that didn’t last. Several more rainy days in a row this week have kept people away again.
U-pick strawberry season will continue into early June, but the plants need to be harvested first in order to produce another round of fruit.
“If you don’t pick them, the plant shuts down,” said Mike Cullipher of Cullipher Farms near Creeds.
He’s trying to make use of the extra ones by mashing them for cider and wine.
Jeannie Flanagan of Flanagan Farm in Pungo is hoping the wet ground won’t be a deterrence this holiday weekend, which is traditionally a busy one. She posted a plea on Facebook Thursday morning:
“Pull on some boots and pick a little happiness.”
Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com
