If you’re itching to eat local produce, you might think the long, harsh winter will postpone the harvest season by weeks or months.
But for some crops, that’s just not the case.
“Typically, a lot of snow means great asparagus. We’re really excited about this year,” says Tim Barrie of Barrie’s Asparagus Farm in Cambridge.
Barrie expects to be harvesting his first crops by early to mid-May.
At Herrle’s Farm Market west of Waterloo, it’ll be a bit later than that – but no later than normal.
Strawberries and peas are normally harvested around mid-June, and the Herrles say everything appears to be right on schedule.
“If May turns out really, really warm, we might get somewhere earlier in June,” says James Herrle.
The first crop of peas was planted over the weekend, and corn should go into the ground within the next week.
Over on the strawberry fields, Herrle says the cold winter would have spelled trouble for the fruit were it not for all the snow it put between the cold winds and the berries.
“I’m so thankful for the large snow pack and that it stayed as long as it did,” he says.
