Extreme heat and rain blamed for cancellation of famous strawberry festival

The popular strawberry festival at Barrie Hill Farms, which takes place every Canada Day weekend, has been cancelled.

Morris Gervais, owner and operator of the 200-plus acre farm, located minutes from Barrie, said the combination of recent weather events left the farm unable to host the event.

“The season started very well. It was a great harvest and a great pick,” he said. BarrieTodayadding that the season came early, which probably meant that people weren’t ready to come out and pick strawberries yet. “When school’s not out, people don’t think as much about picking strawberries.”

Gervais says the extreme heat that lasted several days caused all the strawberries in the fields to ripen faster than normal.

“We couldn’t pick them fast enough because it was so hot and people weren’t coming to pick them either. Then it started raining, and raining, and raining,” he said. “The rain turned everything to mush.”

“Mother Nature is a tough business partner,” Gervais added.

He says his parents started picking strawberries in 1977 and there was never a year when they didn’t have strawberries to pick on July 1st.

“That would be the first year. There were years… it was a late strawberry season. The first day of the season was July 1st. That year, we almost missed it.

Although the festival itself has been canceled, Gervais says strawberry season is far from over.

“We still have a lot of strawberries coming. We have a later variety of summer strawberries coming in and they’re doing well, but they’re just green. They’re not ready,” he said. “It’s just this little window, when we really need them the most, that I don’t have any strawberries.”

Gervais says it is certainly disappointing to have to cancel the festival, which usually sees hundreds of people out each day over the long weekend, but he is pleased that the vendors who were supposed to be on site this weekend were able to “pivot quickly” and will now be based at Bradford Greenhouses.

“We encourage people who were going to visit us to visit Bradford Greenhouse Market and then come here,” he said. “We’re going to try to keep strawberries on the shelves here all weekend, but I’m not doing that. I don’t know if we’ll succeed.

“There’s just not enough strawberries to accommodate thousands of people every day throughout the weekend,” Gervais added. “We want it to be an enjoyable experience and we just couldn’t provide an enjoyable experience with the fields we have.”

Despite the festival’s cancellation, the farmers market will still be open for shopping and the Silo will be open for guests to enjoy frozen yogurt and strawberry waffles.

Gervais expects the next crop of strawberries to be ripe for picking in about a week.