Our First Strawberry Season Has Come To A End...

We are at the end of our first strawberry season & we are just in "AWE" by the support from all of our family & customers.  I will miss eating my breakfast in the fields every morning while picking berries for our farm shed.  Our first season has truly been a blessing and we have learned so much about commercial strawberry farming.  We could not have been as successful without the guidance from Eric Hunter over at Hunter Farms in Easley, SC.  I remember the day back in late September of 2018 when we brought back with us 5,000 plugs from Eric's farm.  It was overwhelming but we hand planted each one in the ground, taking us almost 2 weeks to finish.  When Winter arrived and it was time to cover the berries, we protected them from the frost and kept them covered for days and even weeks to protect the blooms.  We covered and uncovered them berries a lot.  We wanted them to get the sunshine when they needed it, even if it meant having to recover them at night to protect them during the dropping temperatures.  There were a lot of prayers over them berries.  I'm telling you the truth.  We did everything we can to keep from spraying them.  The key was "clean picking".  Each day, every plant needed to be checked and lots of berries were even a waste from not spraying them but it was worth it in the end to have only the best berries to consume.  We had some of the sweetest berries I have ever tasted and some of the biggest.  Thank you all for such a great first season.  We are planning for our next season as new plugs will go into the ground come October.  Our hopes are for a larger crop next year.  A special thanks to Northwestern Supply in Seneca for providing us with all our irrigation needs, AgroFabric for our wintering covers, Beechwood Farms in Marietta, Little Cane Creek Farm in Oconee and our precious parents for being their every step of the way to ensure we had everything we needed to get the job done right.