MANCHESTER — The familiar sign hand-painted with the fat, red berry is back on the side of U.S. Route 202.

It’s been a bit of a wait, and Kenny Trask said people are excited to see the quarts of ripe strawberries at the farm stand he runs with his brother Roger. Trask expects a good season for the fruit.

Additional Images

Paul Castonguay picks strawberries Thursday at Stevenson’s Strawberries in Wayne. Farmer Ford Stevenson said the fields opened Thursday and “we’re rocking and rolling.” Photos by Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal

Ayla Neighbors, 5, of Andover inspects strawberries that she picked Thursday at Stevenson’s Strawberries in Wayne.

Roger Trask sets out boxes of strawberries at the Trask family stand on Wednesday in Manchester. He runs the stand near the Irving station on U.S. Route 202 with his brother Kenny Trask. They said that their father Edward Trask and other family members have had produce stands at different places along the highway for about 60 years. Staff photo by Joe Phelan

“If the weather holds out, it’ll be nice,” Trask said. “Last year was a bad season – too much rain, and then it got hot. The berries started rotting right in the field.”

This year has been different. David Handley, small-fruit specialist at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension at Highmore Farm in Monmouth, said conditions have been ideal in many ways starting last fall and continuing through this week, when many farms in the Augusta area are opening for picking.

That’s right on schedule, Handley said.

“People have been calling for weeks saying, ‘Are the strawberries ready?'” he said. “The last two years, the crop has come in as much as two weeks early. This year, even though it seems much later, we’re on a more normal ripening period.”

Handley said he expects the best strawberry crop Maine has had in three or four years.

Stevenson’s Strawberries in Wayne opened Thursday. A voicemail message at Sand Hill Farm in Somerville said it planned to open Friday after being closed Wednesday and Thursday to allow for ripening. Ben Marcus of Uncas Farms and Sheepscot General Store in Whitefield said they’ll open for picking at 7 a.m. Sunday.

“The rain kind of slowed down the ripening process a little bit, but once we get these days of sun coming up, we’ll have a lot of ripe berries,” Marcus said Thursday. “There’s a lot of fruit out there.”

Susan McMillan can be contacted at 621-5645 or at:

smcmillan@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @s_e_mcmillan

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