Berries Are On The Way!

By Olivia Papendick

In honor of May being National Strawberry Month, this will be a starting point for those of us who might want to enjoy the berry of the month, or the others that will be coming to our local farms soon enough! The biggest sticking points are that fruits and vegetables, and berries, have their own “seasons”, when they grow naturally in an area and would be available there from a local farm rather than being brought from out of the state or even the country. Strawberries, for example, are considered to be in-season in New York state from mid-May through to early July, depending on region. Strawberry season will start earlier where the weather warms up earlier, and start later where the weather warms up later. For us in Western New York, we should actually consider June to be our month for strawberries. Everything is better in season, and there is a season for everything!

A quick note to make sure we’re all on the same page, in-season refers to a fruit or vegetable crop being ripe enough to pick. This doesn’t occur at exactly the same time, but farmers usually plant at around the same time and have about the same growing conditions when they’re in the same region, so if one farmer has ripe and ready to pick fruit, other farmers in that area are likely to have their own crop ripe and ready to pick soon. Ripe fruit is what you want, even if there are always clever ways to use unripe produce, or overripe produce that hasn’t started to rot, just get soft. If you pick too much and can’t manage to eat all of it before it starts to get soft, look on the internet for ways to use it that will let you savor the most you can, as long as it’s overripe, not spoiled. And unripe produce can be used as well, again, take to the internet and see if there’s something fun to try with some fruit that just wasn’t quite ready yet.

Strawberry season is generally the start of berry searson and tends to have some overlap with cherry season, with strawberries typically coming into season in early June. Cherry season in WNY usually tends to fall around mid-to-late June, with sweet cherries usually ripening first and sour cherries ripening two or so weeks later. Blueberry season comes up around mid-July and runs through the month of August, and some specific types of blueberries can even grow into September, if the temperatures stay warm enough for it. When it comes to blackberry season, there’s a sticky situation, blackberries are a distinct berry and are very common in supermarkets and farmers markets alike. If you see a large, shiny, lumpy, dark berry for sale or picking, you’re probably looking at a blackberry, and their typical season in WNY begins in mid-July and trails out to late August. However, there are black raspberries, which are very difficult to find in supermarkets, if you could ever at all, and are usually pretty expensive in farmers markets. Black raspberries are not a berry that is grown commercially or on a large scale in the United States, and that has meant they are not widely known about or eaten. However, if you ever go hiking or you know of a wooded area you can walk through, you might see wild black raspberry bushes. If you want to know about eating wild berries safely, this is not the article for you, I cannot give you any advice or guidance on this and you should find a source of information that you can verify and trust fully. I can tell you that black raspberries are typically praised for their sweetness, often being sweeter than blackberries, though blackberries are generally more juicy than black raspberries. The only real con to black raspberries is that they have seeds. A lot of them. This can make the berries a bit crunchy, but that isn’t to say it makes them bad or not worth eating. That determination can only be made by you. For our last of the core berries, red raspberry season usually begins around early July and to the end of July, with a second round in September and into October, assuming the weather conditions are right for it. There are multiple different kinds of raspberries that may be in season between these two windows, so I highly recommend looking into that if you have a tight work or life schedule and might not be able to make the time for berry picking when you want to. There might still be hope, and you should take advantage of it!

Before I list potential farms that might offer to let you pick these berries for yourself, it needs to be said that plants don’t grow to our whims and there is no real, solid date where we can rely on berries being ready to pick and eat. We have the general timeframes, but that is not a guarantee and it is always dependent on what kind of weather was leading up to the season and how the plants themselves handled any adverse conditions. Due to the uncertainty and difficulty predicting the exact time berries will be available in our area, it’s usually necessary to have a few farms picked out and check their websites and/or social media pages frequently, to see when they post their opening dates and can tell you when you will be able to find the berries you’re looking for. With that made clear, here are a handful of farms that offer “U-Pick” times during the season, where you can pick the berries yourself and you then pay by weight or by volume of the container you put them in.

Greg’s U-Pick Farm Market & CSA; Located in Clarence Center, NY

Thorpe’s Organic Family Farm: Located in East Aurora, NY

Becker Farms; Located in Gasport, NY

Gormley Farms; Located in Wilson, NY

I will note just two more things regarding where you choose to go, if you choose to go to a farm: Always check the reviews if you have specific concerns and note the dates the reviews were left, many farms are decades into the business, if not longer, negative and positive reviews might be from different times under different management. It could still be very nice somewhere, but the reviews changing in a different direction could indicate a change in whether or not you would enjoy the experience there. For the second warning, prices may have increased or decreased between years, and many of these farms might prefer or only accept cash for payment, paying with a credit card may not be an option, remember to bring cash if you can, just in case.

With all of this said and laid out, enjoy your summer break, or just your summer, and take advantage of the fresh and easily accessible produce we have in our area that can also be a source of entertainment or an experience of another kind. I strongly encourage looking into other farms that may be closer to your own home, and remember that there are a lot more tasty treats coming into season soon, more than just berries.