2015: 10 Years Ago

Lamoine — “Every crop has its nemesis,” Chuck Weber said as he weaved through the strawberry runners on his farm in Lamoine. His gray cat, Hank, wasn’t far behind. “For strawberries, it’s the clipper weevil.” Weber is an organic farmer who has been growing strawberries for 25 years. Fortunately, weevils have not been a big problem this year. And despite this spring’s stretch of rainy days, the berries haven’t suffered because they “can’t get enough water,” Weber said. “I was actually out here watering them the other day while it was raining.” “What we found so far is that growth is good and pest numbers have been pretty low,” said David Handley, vegetable and small fruit specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. He said that while the winter may have been brutal for us humans, it was favorable to the strawberry crop, since snow cover protects the berries.