Pam and Steve Bardenhagen of Bardenhagen Berries in Lake Leelanau are ramping up for yet another delicious strawberry harvest.
Steve says they will be able to begin the harvest this weekend with a limited supply hitting the long-standing, familyrun farm stand at 7990 E. Horn Rd. throughout the weekend and early next week.
“If we started on June 7 it would be about 11 days earlier than normal ... Having to irrigate hardly at all,” Steve said.
Bardenhagen Berries and other farmers were mostly spared of frost this spring, having to protect their crops only a couple time for minor frost temperatures.
“It’s been a pretty good growing season all together,” Steve said. “We’ve never had a failure like we had in cherries.”
Bardenhagen Berries has seen a slight hike in cost jump by $1 to combat ever growing labor costs.
“We’re just trying to balance it all out,” Pam said.
Bardenhagen Berries is growing on more fertile ground this year that will produce a lot more berries than previous years from their field located across from the farm stand on Horn Road. Since COVID, Bardenhagen Berries has been working on scaling up their workforce after getting hit with a labor shortage.
Labor cost for Bardenhagen Berries have gone up 15% yearover- year, which represents the biggest, over half of production costs going to labor alone.
Despite the rising cost, Bardenhagen Berries, is continuing the farmer-fight and grateful to have the same families coming back year-after-year to work on the farm.
Pam says Bardenhagen Berries farming has shifted over the last few years, “to serving the more local community and we really appreciate the support we get from the local community.”
The unpredictable spring has led to plenty of rainfall for strawberries. Steve is hoping rain doesn’t hamper harvest efforts, but is concerned for cherries down the road.
“In 2020, we had a two-day rain over a weekend and we pretty much couldn’t pick anymore strawberries after that,” Steve said. “(This crop) it’s perfect for beautiful, big berries. 2019 was the last year we had berries (size ) like this year.”
The past few years have seen smaller sized berries for the iconic Leelanau farm that can grow somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,00 pounds of strawberries in a growing season.
“The margins are super thin,” Pam said.
Orders can be placed at bardenhagenberries.com or by stopping by the country farm stand.
Pre-orders should be available any moment now.
