Eastern Ontario Strawberries
1594 County Rd 15 K0K 2T0 Picton, ON, Canada

So its shaping up to be a busy year, with almost 100,000 new plants being planted this spring. We will have a total of 8 varieties available this year, which should spread out our production cycle across the entire season.

Where have all the strawberries gone? A recent article outlined that Ontario strawberry growers are becoming a rare item. In 1995 there were around 5,000 acres of strawberries grown in Ontario, (according to Stats Can), fast forward to 2015, and its down to approx 1600 acres. Thats less than 1/3rd of acres growing Ontario strawberries. Whats behind the drop ? Where do I start? Pick your own operations failing because people arent canning or jammin', urban area farms being swa...llowed up for development (urban sprawl), strawberry virus, import competition, lack of labor, lower yields due to warmer temperatures, and farmers retiring are just a few of the reasons. Seems the local Ontario strawberry may soon be a rarity if the trend continues.

So sometimes we get the inevitable question about the pricing of local strawberries versus the imported ones. Well it comes down to yield per acre really (and local labor costs etc), California farms can achieve 50,000lbs per acre due to their year round temperate climate, whereas, locally grown fields in our region only produce around 3,500lbs per acre. So at 7% of the southern climates yield , if the costs were multiplied accordingly, they would be at a 14x multiple of the ...southern imported ones. I'd say the local ones are a bargain, even though the sticker price might seem higher. We can always argue taste later :)

Gosh , and I thought WE grew them big .. this one needed a truck to haul it .. hehe

We are now closed for the season. We are going to a wholesale only business model for 2017, which means you'll still be able to get our strawberries but through area stores and resellers at some farm markets. If you are interested in carrying our products please contact us.