The popular Strawberry Festival at Barrie Hill Farms, which takes place every Canada Day weekend, has been cancelled.
Morris Gervais, who owns and operates the more than 200-acre farm — located just a few minutes outside of Barrie — said the combination of recent weather events has left the farm unable to host the event.
“The season started off really nicely. It was a beautiful crop and beautiful picking,” he told BarrieToday, adding the season came early which likely resulted in people not being ready to come out and pick yet. “When school is not out, people don’t think of strawberry picking as much.”
Gervais says the extreme heat that lasted for several days ripened all of the strawberries out in the fields faster than normal.
“We couldn’t pick them fast enough because it was so hot and people weren’t coming to pick, either. Then it started to rain and rain and rain,” he said. “The rain just turned everything to mush.”
“Mother Nature is a tough business partner,” added Gervais.
He says his parents started strawberry picking in 1977 and there has never been a year where they have not had strawberries to pick on July 1.
“This would be the first year. There have been years … it was a late strawberry season. The first day of the season was July 1. We almost missed it that year.”
Although the festival itself has been cancelled, Gervais says strawberry season is far from over.
“We still have lots of strawberries coming. We have a later variety of summer strawberries that’s coming and they're fine, but they’re just green. They’re not ready,” he said. “It’s just this little window, when we really need it the most, that I have no strawberries.”
Gervais says it’s definitely disappointing to have to cancel the festival, which typical sees hundreds of people out each day over the course of the long weekend, but he’s happy that the vendors who were supposed to be on site this weekend were able to “pivot quickly” and will now be set up at Bradford Greenhouses.
“We are encouraging the people that were going to come visit us to go visit the market at Bradford Greenhouse and then come here," he said. "We are going to try to keep some strawberries on the shelf here all weekend, but I don’t know if we will succeed.
"There just aren’t enough strawberries out there to have thousands of people coming every day all weekend,” Gervais added. “We want it to be an enjoyable experience and we just couldn’t deliver an enjoyable experience with the fields we have.”
Despite the festival being cancelled, the farm market will still be open for shopping and the silo will be open for guests to enjoy frozen yogurt and strawberry waffles.
Gervais expects the next crop of strawberries should be ripe for the picking in about a week.
