If you have not bought or picked strawberries yet this season, you’d better hurry. Although strawberry season started in late May and usually lasts about 5-6 weeks, this year’s season will be shortened by about 2 weeks due to this spring’s crazy weather. Unexpected warm weather was quickly followed by a frost that damaged many of the first strawberry producing flower buds. According to Eleanor Whittemore, of Brookdale Fruit Farm in Hollis, the loss of the first flowering buds or the “King buds” can hurt a farm’s bottom line for the first cash crop of the growing season. “Fortunately,” says Adrian Lavoie of Lavoie farm, “we plant many varieties of berries so they ripen at intervals throughout the harvest. There are plenty of berries to pick.”
Strawberry fields give their best yields for 2-4 years, and are then replaced by a new field that has been replanted with new plants. When each year’s harvesting is finished, the strawberry rows are mowed and fertilized to get ready for next year’s harvest. Although many farms sell picked quarts of berries at their own farm stands or to local stores and restaurants, PYO or “Pick Your Own” strawberry pickers provide almost 50 percent of the strawberry revenues for a farm (for information on where to go in the greater-Nashua area to buy and pick local strawberries, go to http://www.pickyourown.org/NH.htm and scroll down to “Hillsborough County”).
There is no doubt that local strawberries taste better than berries shipped from other parts of the country. Vine ripened strawberries, like other local fruits, have fully developed natural sugars and higher concentrations of vitamin C, antioxidants and fiber. But berries shipped from Florida or California are picked before they are fully ripened so they can travel better, and therefore are not as sweet as our local strawberries.
Be sure to pick red, firm, ripe berries. And when storing your berries, do not wash them first unless you thoroughly dry them, as any moisture left on the berries will deteriorate them faster. Take your berries out of their quart container and store them in an air tight container in the refrigerator. And, due to their naturally high sugar content, local berries also produce delicious results when canned and frozen for out of season eating.
A favorite way to eat fresh strawberries is sliced, sugared and spooned onto a homemade biscuit topped with fresh whipped cream. If you’re wondering where you can get delicious strawberry shortcake, you can either do it yourself using the recipe at the end of this column, or you can head to the Hollis Strawberry Festival this Sunday June 24th from 2-4PM.
Over fifty years ago, the Hollis Town Band and the Hollis Woman’s Club joined together to create this enduring, beloved day of hometown fun to benefit local scholarships and community organizations. Held in the historic town center, the streets are closed to cars as families gather to listen to the music of the Hollis Town Band while visiting with friends and waiting eagerly for their turn to order up homemade strawberry shortcake.
This year’s festival co-chair, Lori Dwyer, is getting help from Hollis Woman’s Club and Hollis Town Band members, members of the local First Robotics Team, the high school Honor Society, the boy’s varsity soccer team, and local Girl Scout troops. On Friday, a hulling party will be held at the Congregational Church where 336 quarts of strawberries delivered from Brookdale Fruit Farm and Lull Farm will be sliced in anticipation of the 1,500 expected festival attendees. The berries will then be stored in cold storage facilities donated by local farms. On Saturday, volunteer bakers will cook off 84 pans of shortcakes.
On Sunday, the church kitchen will be a hub of activity as the berries are sugared, gallons of cream are hand whipped, and ice cream is delivered from Doc Davis Ice Cream. Outside, tents will be hoisted up by band members while local artisans prepare their booths for shoppers. 40 servers and ice cream scoopers will be ready for the 2PM chime of the church bell, and the first baton swing of the band leader, Dave Bailey.