NESCOPECK TWP. — As Jen Broyan walked through her field, she pointed to clumps of strawberries starting to redden but also strips of black plastic where no plants grew.
About half of the crop didn’t materialize so Broyan canceled a tradition on the farm that she owns with her husband, Francis, and son, Logan.
For the first time in 15 years that the Broyans have raised strawberries, they won’t let customers enter the field to pick.
In other years on a Saturday in June, 40 or 50 cars with strawberry pickers might pull into the 3-acre field on Zenith Road a mile east of Route 93 in Luzerne County. Some people might drive an hour or so and Broyan doesn’t want to disappoint them.
“You can’t have 50 people picking. In less than two hours it could be done,” Broyan said. She and a few family and friends will pick enough berries this year to supply their farm store at 493 Berwick Hazleton Highway, which is Route 93.
Other farmers in Northeast Pennsylvania still hope that with a little sunshine after an unusually rainy May they will be able to welcome strawberry pickers as usual.
Harry Roinick thinks he can open to pickers on Sunday or Monday at Pumpkin Hill Farm on Wapwallopen Road about two miles from the Broyan’s store.
Picking might have to close at times during the season because the crop is thin.
“Too wet a spring, not as nice as last year,” Roinick said.
Julianne Roba said her farm, Lakeland Orchard and Cidery, is a little farther north in Scott Twp., Lackawanna County so strawberries are a little behind those in Luzerne County.
“This rainy weather hasn’t come into play,” said Roba, explaining a paradox. “Strawberries don’t like water, and they need water.”
On her plants, Roba is seeing red berries also white flowers that will turn into fruit in the next 28 days or so. She plans to allow strawberry pickers to start by next weekend at Lakeland, where the Strawberry Festival runs from June 5 to 29.
Richard LaCoe when asked about fields at LaCoe’s Berry Nice Farm in Newton Twp., Lackawanna County, laughed briefly.
“It’s wet,” he said. “So far my earlier berries aren’t looking too good. They need the sunshine.”
For May, rain fell on 19 of the first 28 days in Avoca where rainfall totals of 6.18 inches were 3.25 inches more than normal as recorded by the National Weather Service.
Wet weather poses hazards for strawberry growers, making fungal and bacterial diseases a bigger problem, said Kathleen Demchak, a senior extension agent for Penn State Extension who writes frequently about strawberries.
Botrytis or gray mold produces more spores that spread through the air in wet weather while other diseases spread through water splashes.
Jen Broyan shows a split in a strawberry caused by rapid water absorption at her family's farm on Zenith Road in Nescopeck Twp. on Thursday, May 29, 2025.(John Haeger / Staff Photographer)
“Berries on most varieties tend to split when they swell up too quickly from too much moisture all at once,” Demchak said in an email that pointed out another obstacle for strawberry pickers on wet days.
Cars get stuck in the mud.
Barron “Boots” Hetherington won’t have any strawberries for the first time in 45 years on his fields in Union Twp., Schuylkill County.
“We got wiped out,” Hetherington said.
Hetherington and Broyan had more problems, however, with a dry winter than a wet May.
“It got super hot in the fall,” said Hetherington, who irrigated crops in the November for the first time ever.
His strawberries also were struck by mites, pests that he couldn’t see without a magnifying lens.
“We got a chemical to kill the mites,” said Hetherington, equating his strawberries after the mites arrived to a person with a weakened immune system. The plants weren’t ready for the hot winter. “They never came back.”
Broyan said she didn’t realize how the dry fall was affecting her strawberry plants.
“We still thought ‘Maybe they’ll come up,’” she said before deciding to tell customers that the farm wouldn’t open for you-pick strawberry season.
“We understand this is disappointing news, as many of you look forward to visiting each year,” a post of the Facebook page for Broyan’s Farm said. “Please know this decision was made with great care, prioritizing the health of our fields and the quality standards we uphold.”
“Eek,” Diane Hyduke of Sugarloaf Twp. said after seeing the post. “I was wondering what they were going to do. The strawberries are just going to be mush.”
Hyduke, who makes strawberry jam and serves fresh berries over homemade poundcake, thought her 16-month-old grandson might like helping her and her daughter pick strawberries this year.
Broyan strawberry crop at the Zenith Road field in Nescopeck on Thursday, May 29, 2025.(John Haeger / Staff Photographer)
So they plan to try Pumpkin Hill, where Roinick said this season might be his last for strawberries. Yields aren’t as good as when he started growing them in 2006. Fungi are getting in the ground, and Pennsylvania doesn’t have enough berry growers to make soil fumigation worthwhile as in other states.
Between 2017 and 2022, the number of berry farms in Pennsylvania dipped to 1,635 from 1,802, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual statistics bulletin for the state. Ground planted with berries, however, increased to 2,374 acres from 2,334 acres.
Strawberry fields aren’t forever. The Broyans set new plants every three years, but their current plants are in their third year, which should have been their most fruitful.
Broyan laughs when she hears people speculating in her fields about how much money the farm brings in from strawberries.
“We’ve got birds at one end,” Broyan said while displaying a berry with beak-sized bite missing, “and ants at another.”
To keep out deer, the Broyans fenced in the field.
To plant the three acres by hand used to take three weeks with seven people, who bent down to put each plant in the ground,
Now they use a planter that is faster, but the plugs that the machine plops in the ground cost three times as much as the starter plants.
Still, the Broyans said they’ll replant strawberries this year to be ready for next spring.
Meanwhile, the field has enough berries for them to sell in pints and quarts and bake into fruit bars at their store, where they also offer their other fruits and vegetables throughout the season.
Likewise Hetherington, who will have raspberries, black berries and peas for customers to pick this summer in Schuylkill County, isn’t giving up on strawberries either.
“The good news is there’s plants in the cooler,” he said. “We’ll have a gorgeous crop for next spring.”