Agriculture

Cool spring puts small delay on strawberry season

Published

4 years ago

June 12, 2020

Kaitlyn Riley

Strawberry season is nearly ripe for the picking.

John Jolivette of Jolivette Family Farms in West Salem planned to start picking strawberries for retail by Friday.

“I’m not sure when pick-your-own will open up,” Jolivette said. “It will probably be another week after that.”

A cool spring caused a delay, but so far weather has been favorable.

“When we get a lot of ripe fruit, they don’t like a lot of rain,” Jolivette said. “We’ve been alright so far. They still need a lot of water every week. They need about an inch of rain a week.”

Although weather has cooperated, animals have not. Jolivette said the business lost about three of their nine acres of strawberries to deer.

Their kohlrabi and onions are ripe, and he adds raspberries are coming in well this year.

Kaitlyn Riley

Kaitlyn Riley’s passion for communications started on her family’s dairy farm in Gays Mills, Wis. Wanting to share agriculture’s story, she studied strategic communications and broadcast journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In college, she held officer positions with the Association of Women in Agriculture and Badger Dairy Club while volunteering as a news reporter for the college radio station. She also founded the university’s first agricultural radio talk show, AgChat. In her professional career, Kaitlyn has worked in radio, print and television news doing everything from covering local events to interviewing presidential candidates, and putting back on her barn boots to chat with farmers in the field. Today, Kaitlyn can be seen covering local stories that matter to you in the La Crosse area.