Although heavy August rains have hurt raspberry picking, a Neguac blueberry farmer says they have actually helped this year's crop recover from a late start resulting from a cool spring. "Following a bad spring, a bad pollination period ... we're still looking at a good crop," said Bernard Savoie, a Neguac-area Blueberry producer. "The rain, up to a point, almost saved us." Savoie said the heavy rains this month - with the total Miramichi rainfall from Aug. 1-3 surpassing the average for the entire month - had caused the blueberry crop to mature faster than expected. "We are surprised with the size of the berries we got there," Savoie said. "It was almost like having an irrigation system going on, day after day." However, had the heavy rains continued, he added, the berries would have ripened to the point where they would have started falling from the bushes, making picking difficult. Fortunately, he said, several days of sun helped dry out the ground, making it firm enough to allow harvest machinery to operate. According to New Brunswick's Agriculture Department, the Acadian Peninsula and Kent County account for approximately half the province's crop of wild blueberries. They are typically harvested in August and early September after a two-year growing cycle. The executive director of the Canadian branch of the North American Wild Blueberry Association, Neri Vautour, said New Brunswick's blueberry harvest this season will be just a little less than last year's record crop of 26.1 million pounds. "Overall, it looks like we're going to have a very good crop in New Brunswick," he said. "I'm hearing it's supposed to be quite good." Vautour and Savoie said while heavy rains help make blueberries plumper and juicier, it will not affect how they taste. Other crops aren't so fortunate. At least one smaller Miramichi-area raspberry farm has been hard hit by this month's intermittent downpours. "The rain kind of did them in," said Ron Reid, who helps out at Bay du Vin U-Pick raspberry farm, owned by his mother-in-law. "Too much rain, all at once." He said the rain has caused the berries to swell up, watering down their taste and encouraging mould. "As you pick them, they're just bursting," he said. He said raspberry cultivation tends to run in two-year cycles as well, with one year being exceptional and the rest being relatively average. "Last year was a real exceptional crop, and this year was going to be a not-so-good crop, and then the rain on top of it kind of ... added insult to injury," he said, adding: "We're a small operation here, so it's not that dramatic. Life goes on." Source: miramichileader.canadaeast.com

Publication date: 8/27/2008