05/06/2025
We are touched by everyone’s kind words and offers of help, but the situation is far more complicated than you may be aware. The soil will no longer support strawberry plants for the foreseeable future. We lost 90% of our strawberries; 5 1/2 patches in total to black root rot. To replant that would take at least 35,000 strawberry plants and they may fail after the first year too. Black root rot is incurable and is often the result of too much precipitation (it started with our very wet spring last year) in heavy soil (we have a clay mix in our strawberry field). Soil born plant pathogens also build up, especially when strawberries have been planted in same field for many years, as is the case with our farm (even with cover crop rotation), just due do to land limitations. We have consulted experts and tried every environmentally sound fix to no avail. We have thought long and hard about how to proceed and we simply have to chart a new course. We will not be starting a Gofundme account. We may be offering some pre-picked berries this summer. We will keep you posted. Thank you and best wishes to you all!
