The 2018 blueberry harvest is under way in Downeast Maine. Early indications point to good harvest conditions, although the overall market remains diminished. At the Lynch Hill Farms fields near Columbia Falls, harvesting began on Aug. 1.
“We were already starting to see a little strain on the berries because of the heat,” said Manager Courtney Hammond. Hammond said he was expecting to harvest 120 acres total between Lynch Hill Farms and smaller farms that contract out to him.At the Blue Hill Berry Company in Penobscot, owner Nicolas Lindholm said the condition of the berries being harvested was good.
“Personally, I didn’t see much frost. I’m expecting to match last year’s harvest if not exceed it a bit,” said Lindholm. “We had a very strong spring weatherwise: good pollination conditions.” At the Lynch Hill Farms fields, Hammond also said he had not seen much “mummy berry,” a fungal pathogen that destroys blueberries.
Nancy McBrady, executive director of the Wild Blueberry Commission, said that the USDA will be purchasing 8.57 million pounds of frozen blueberries, at a cost of $9.36 million dollars. “This is around the number the growers and freezers requested,” said McBrady. “The idea is that this will help the market settle.”
Overall, McBrady expected similar numbers from the 2018 harvest in terms of tonnage and price, although the hope is that the latest round of USDA buy-backs will alleviate the backlog and help prices increase.
In Harrington, at the Blueberry Harvest School operated by the non-profit Mano en Mano, Executive Director Ian Yaffe said that he was expecting slightly more students than in 2017, but fewer overall than in years past. Yaffe said that Mano en Mano, which provides educational services to children of migrant agricultural workers, had 42 students in the first week of August, and was expecting that number to increase.
At the Rakers’ Center, an annual pop-up resource for workers that operates out of Narragaugus High School in Harrington, Jorge Acero also noted that the number of workers in the area was similar to last year.
“Passamaquoddy Wild Blueberry is harvesting this year, which they didn’t in 2017,” said Acero. “So there might be slightly more workers, but not much different from last year.”
Acero, who is a state migrant and seasonal farm worker monitor and advocate with the Maine Department of Labor, said he had not heard of any increased Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in the area. “I’ve heard about the checkpoints near Bangor, but nothing out here,” he said.
Source: Ellsworth American
