ARLINGTON — The strawberries are earlier than Mike Biringer can remember.
And he’s been a berry grower for a long time.
This year’s haul also is one of the best crops the 79-year-old farmer has seen.
Now it’s just a matter of getting enough people to pick them.
The farmer and his wife, Dianna, are the second generation to run Biringer Farm. Their son also works there. They’ve been at 21412 59th Ave. NE in Arlington for about a decade. Before that, the farm was in Marysville. Their family has been growing berries in Snohomish County since 1948.
Biringer Farm is a popular spot for U-pick strawberries and hundreds of people came to pick over Memorial Day weekend, Mike Biringer said.
However, more than half of the farm’s business comes from hiring pickers and selling strawberries on site, at farmers markets and produce stands and to processors. Biringer likes to have a crew of at least 50 pickers, preferably 70. This week, they have a dozen adult pickers in the mornings and 15 to 20 teens who come after school.
“We’re going to be struggling this year to get enough people to pick,” Biringer said. “It’s kind of a seasonal thing, so people think of strawberries more when school gets out.”
The start of strawberry season always has varied a bit, but usually it falls between June 6 and 17, he said. They’ve struggled some years to get berries in time for the Marysville Strawberry Festival, which is on Father’s Day weekend.
For the past two years, strawberry season has started weeks early.
Last year, picking was under way by May 30. This year, it started May 21.
Biringer credits the early season to consistently warm temperatures this spring. He expects the strawberries will be ripe for a few more weeks. Normally, strawberry season continues past the Fourth of July, but he doesn’t expect it to last that long this year.
The Biringers also grow raspberries, tayberries, black raspberries and some blackberries and blueberries. The strawberries and raspberries are most popular, and raspberry season looks to be early, too. One variety of raspberries is ripe this week and others are expected to be ready for picking by mid-June. Most years, raspberry picking is good into August.
“I don’t think that’ll happen this year because we’re just shifted earlier,” Biringer said.
Late Tuesday morning, about 25 people were filling flats with strawberries from the U-pick patch. The top leaves of the plants tickled adult pickers’ knees when they stood between rows and young children giggled as they ducked out of view to find the perfect red, ripe strawberry.
Joan and Jim Hill, of Lake Stevens, have been coming to Biringer Farm together just about every year for a decade. Joan Hill freezes strawberries to save them for the rest of the year. It took them about 40 minutes to load up two flats. Joan Hill teased her husband, whose flat had more berries, that he must have picked a better row than she did.
Jim Hill got good at picking strawberries as a kid, when he would walk from his house on 92nd Avenue in Marysville to Biringer Farm’s former location on 88th Avenue. He and Joan picked berries in the Biringers’ fields for a few weeks each year as a summer job.
It’s an early season but the strawberries are looking good, he said. He hopes to come back and pick more.
“Heck, I’d come back and do it again tomorrow,” he said. “But I think if you give it two more days, these will be perfect.”
Carrie Dooley brought her 3-year-old daughter, Avonlea, to Biringer Farm on Tuesday. The Dooley family moved to Lake Stevens from Spokane about a year and a half ago. Though it was their first visit to Biringer, they’ve been picking strawberries for years and Dooley uses some for strawberry shortcake and the rest to make jam for her three school-age children’s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Avonlea held her hand in the air and tightened her fingers to show how she would squish a strawberry.
“We squish them so we can make jelly,” she explained.
She looks for the big, dark red ones that will make the sweetest jam. “I don’t pick the yucky ones.”
Avonlea was born in July and Dooley remembers picking strawberries in Eastern Washington during the last few weeks of her pregnancy. To be out picking on the last day of May was a surprise, she said.
She recommends that people get out to the fields soon. Bring sunscreen and water, she warned.
It doesn’t take long to fill a flat. Hers was loaded within half an hour. But Avonlea wasn’t done yet.
The energetic 3-year-old, with a pink-and-white striped shirt and blonde hair tied back in twin braids, just needed a minute to drink her Capri Sun and regain her motivation.
“We need to pick some more,” she said.
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com.
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