Ask Professor Produce

Can we expect local organic strawberries this year? Why are these so rare in co-ops and farmers' markets? I know they must be grown somewhere around here!

Ah, the elusive glistening ruby of produce, the sweet and tender organic strawberry. She shines with an inner light, a glow of incredible crimson beneath a satiny seed-studded veil, her luscious and sensual nature no match for common fruits. Yes, somehow, she manages to grow here in Minnesota. Go figure.

Not that up until recently we'd know it, at least not in the retail organic fruit circuit. I'm sure there are folks who will claim they remember seeing them here, back in pre-certification days, when a farmer's word and scrubby bohemian look were all the assurance one would need that the food was chemical-free. But politics evolve and now it has become apparent that it is actually rather difficult to grow strawberries organically for large retail outlets like the Wedge in this state. Luckily difficult does not mean impossible, and several berry farmers, sweet as the crops themselves, have been perfecting this particular labor of love for everyone's benefit. Thus the short answer to your question is, yes, we can expect to have an abundant supply of organic local strawberries this summer. The second part of your question bears a bit of explanation, because yes, these beauties have been rare.

The strawberry is a crop that lives up to its diva status-being extremely, shall we say, "high maintenance" from pre-planting to post-harvest. She demands weedless, pristine soil, bedded in straw to keep her feet moist in the hot sun. The straw, however, holds that moisture and encourages growth of mildews and detrimental varieties of fungus. It is also a hospitable environment for a number of insects, and when you're as fragrant and yielding as a ripe strawberry, you've got a virtual papparazi of pests stopping by. Conventionally grown strawberries receive everything: pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and fertilizers. Thinking in terms of these myriad applications, one can understand why they have become the industry yardstick used to compare chemical residue levels of all produce.

So what we're talking about when we're talking about a locally grown organic strawberry is a fruit that naturally speaking, we have almost no right to be enjoying! By all odds, anything should have gotten to it first. So in this way we can see our organic berry farmers as being the ultimate body guards - er, berry guards - protecting and serving the interests of the berry until she can meet with her final fate, nestled perhaps between two layers of fluffy cake and a pile of whipped cream, or the Professor's personal favorite, sliced and covered in a thin drizzle of single-source Goldenrod honey...

Our local berry guards at Glacial Acres Farm in Sunburg, Minnesota are slated to be supplying the Wedge with a multitude of organic strawberries this year. Their berries are splendidly textured, juicy, and flavored like the mixing of sugar and sunshine itself. They are perhaps pricey compared with the berries we truck in from California, but when we consider the labor of love and adoration that goes with each perfectly protected, harvested and rinsed quart of berries, you aren't just buying food anymore. You're buying a private audience with the divine essence of early summer, herself. Enjoy!