BUMPER CROP

BUTTE — It’s been a strange growing season for Steve Garcia, to say the least.

Garcia has been running Garcia Alaska Farm, often aided by his family including wife, Patsy Garcia, daughter Mary Jane Garcia and son-in-law Nathan Jordan, for a number of years at Mile 6 Old Glenn Highway. The farm is mostly a “U-pick” operation where folks pick their own produce and pay by the pound.

He specializes in strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and has started dabbling in blackberries, all grown on about an acre of land. Usually he also grows squash but this year decided against it.

What’s strange about this year, though, has been the growing season. Customers, he said, started calling at about the end of July and Garcia had to turn them away.

There weren’t any berries to be picked.

He also decided not to bring any professional pickers up to Alaska like he has in previous years. Though the blueberries and raspberries are open to customers willing to pick them, he says the strawberry patch is off limits, requiring pickers.

“The kind I got they lay on the middle of the row,” he said, explaining why customers are barred from the strawberry patch. “If they don’t watch it, they’ll step on them.”

Almost to add insult to injury, Garcia got into a car accident earlier this summer, which has kept him out of the berry patch as he recovers from whiplash and a broken leg.

All that wouldn’t have been so bad since it looked like he’d go all summer without any berries. But then August rolled around and the berries started blooming and blooming big.

“They’re almost as big as an apple and they’re firm, very firm and extra sweet,” he said of his strawberries. “You have to eat them like an apple.”

With a late bloom and no one to pick his produce he’s been left in something of a quandary. What is he going to do with all these berries?

“I’ve been giving them away to friends and family,” and, really, anyone else who wants to come pick them, he said. “Right now they’re free, the raspberries,” he said.

One caveat, though – however tempting it might be to eat an apple-sized strawberry, it’s probably best to stay away from them.

“The strawberries I don’t recommend them because of the weather we’ve been having slugs,” he said, and the slugs have mainly had their way with the berries. “I don’t want to put no chemicals on them.”

The late bloom, he said, is due to the weather. But the size of the strawberries — that’s pure genetics.

“Genetically you have to pick the right variety for this zone and people don’t stop to think about that,” Garcia said, noting that his plants weather the winter well and thrive in Alaska.

“My strawberries are bigger than the ones I saw at the state fair,” he said.

But, Garcia said, he’s not a stranger to big produce. His squash at times grew to be quite large, he said, describing how he loaded them onto his truck.

“I loaded them like watermelons because they were so big,” he said. “Me and my kids used to go up and down Eagle River with a truck knocking on doors and selling them a while back.”

These days, he said, he keeps them small. That’s how the stores like them.

But, he said, it’s really the strawberries and the raspberries — with which he experiments with various growing techniques – that have been his passion.

He’s spent many years farming, Garcia said, with a laugh, “and many years of fooling around with strawberries. I’ve dedicated my life to strawberries.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.