Local farm worries how COVID-19 will affect strawberry u-pick
The strawberry u-pick on Gilbert Farm has been running in Burton, N.B., for 29 years. But if COVID-19 doesn’t let up before picking season, the result could be devastating.
Melisa Gilbert helps run the farm and worries how the public will respond.
“We are racking our brains trying to figure out what is going to happen this summer,” said Gilbert. “It is our livelihood, and for us this is a scary situation. It would be hard to recover, even if we could.”
Gilbert Farm is one of the many small businesses feeling the effects of the coronavirus shutdown. While yesterday’s announcement of $5 billion in additional lending capacity for farmers may offer some relief, many are still facing uncertainty.
“We don’t know what the public is going to do, but we’re figuring out what we can do on our end to keep it positive.”
The farm has been family owned and operated since ‘50s and started as an apple orchard. Over the years it has grown to include beef cattle, pear trees and pumpkins. In 1991 Melisa’s husband, Malcolm Gilbert, planted the strawberry fields and today Gilbert says they account for 90% of their business.
“The strawberries are everything.”
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She credits the berries for essential operational costs such as power, farm insurance, property tax, machinery maintenance, diesel, hay, grain, vet bills and wages for pickers. Last year’s harvest also paid for a new bull, and four new tractor tires costing $10,000.
In addition to filling orders within the community, Gilbert Farm is a major supplier to Moxon’s Country Pumpkin. In the past they’ve always hired students to pick the strawberries, but Gilbert worries if the students will be allowed to pick this year with the COVID-19 precautions in place.
“Are parents going to let their children congregate with 20 other children every morning to pick strawberries? Or are parents just going to say ‘no’, because they don’t know where other families have been or who they’ve been exposed to.”
Typically, pickers are spaced 2-3 feet apart and rows are within 3 feet of each other, but with social-distancing recommending a 6-foot gap, Gilbert will have to stagger the pickers – provided their parents allow them to work.
She says that the people who pick berries for jam, and the people that visit the u-pick for an outing aren’t enough business to keep them going. And worries if they’ll come at all.
Another issue they’re facing is the handling of cash. As a smaller business, they’ve always dealt with cash or cheque – but with fewer cash exchanges taking place because of COVID-19, Gilbert will have to invest in an electronic method of carrying out transactions. Gilbert says the startup cost of a debit machine not something they’ve budgeted for.
Regardless, the Gilbert’s have no choice but to go ahead with the harvest. In five weeks they’ll be removing the hay insulating the existing strawberry fields and in a few weeks they have 40,000 new strawberry plants on their way from Nova Scotia. Something they planned to pay for from this year’s harvest.
“There’s going to be two fields full of fresh, ripe strawberry and if they don’t get picked off they’re going to lay there and rot, and to us, that’d be the same as a banker setting all of his money on fire.”