Extreme heat and rain lead to 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, who owns and operates the 200-plus acre farm – located just minutes from Barrie – said the combination of recent weather events prevented the farm from hosting the event.

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

Gervais said the extreme heat that lasted for 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 they didn’t have strawberries to pick on July 1.

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

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

“We still have a lot of strawberries coming in. We have a later summer strawberry variety coming in and they look nice, 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 really disappointing to have to cancel the festival, which usually sees hundreds of people come out each day over the long weekend, but 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’re encouraging people who were going to visit us to go to Bradford Greenhouse Market and then come here,” he said. “We’ll try to keep some strawberries on the shelves here all weekend, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that.

“There’s just not enough strawberries to accommodate thousands of people every day all 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.