CONSUMER VALUES
Two things we hear again and again from strawberry consumers are concern over pesticide residues on their food and bafflement over why their strawberries don't taste much like strawberries.
We address the first concern by following strictly organic farming methods. This means that we don't use any synthetically compounded fungicides, herbicides, or pesticides on our plants. Our farm is Certified Organic by California Certified Organic Farmers, the oldest and most respected certifying group in California. The question of flavor is not so clear-cut. Organic methods may help in producing a more flavorful and nutritious strawberry, but they are not the only secret to success. We spend a lot of time thinking about how our berries and vegetables are going to taste. Of course, Mother Nature has the last word, but there are a number of things we can do to maximize the flavor of our products:
We pick them as ripe as possible, and get them to our customers as soon as we can. This is really tough to do, because the riper a strawberry is, the more susceptible it is to damage and spoiling. An unripe berry is firmer and much easier to handle.
We don't pump our plants with chemical fertilizers, which would give us extra tons of fruit, but just that much less flavor in each berry. Organic methods help in this area because the organic fertilizers we use release nutrients to the plant slowly.
We choose varieties that taste good. Unfortunately, those varieties invariably produce lower yields (and hence higher per-unit cost).
We build our soil. A rich soil will offer the plant a wide range of nutrients which will result in a more complex flavor. Flavor is a combination of smells and sugars. It is possible to grow a strawberry that is sweet but still lacks a complex flavor. Most strawberries are grown on sandy soils which don't have much to offer the plant in terms of nutrients.
We don't water too much. The extra water dilutes the flavor.
We don’t give up. No matter how hard we try, we don’t always get it right. Sometimes we get a berry that is long on complex flavor but a little short on sugar. Mother Nature may not have cooperated with enough sunshine, or maybe she gave us an extra irrigation! We have a long harvest season (from April through September), so we get some variability in flavor as conditions change. But we always do our part to get the best flavor possible at the time of harvest.
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