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Farmers: Rough season for strawberries due to heavy rain

Heavy rain in May made for a hard strawberry season this year. One local farmer plans to cut back on production.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WVEC)—Strawberry-picking season has come and gone, and one Virginia Beach farmer is cutting back future production after this year’s losses.

Early in the season, the Virginia Beach Department of Agriculture announced this would be a good year for strawberries, but after the heavy rain in May, things went south for one local farmer.

“Winky” Henley has been running Henley Farms for 60 years and has growing berries for 50. He grew up on the family farm, and at 78-years-old, he still keeps busy.

This year, he had eight acres of strawberries, but about one-fourth of the crops were ruined by heavy rain.

"We're actually going to plant less next year than we did this year," said Henley.

He plans on cutting back significantly. Instead of his usual eight to ten acres of strawberries, he will downsize to five or six acres next season. Even on good days, strawberries are a difficult crop to grow and maintain. Add in bad weather, and you’ve got a problem.

"It's really not worth the gamble to plant twice as many as you're probably gonna sell," said Henley.

He described the unpredictable weather as a farmer’s worst nightmare.

“If u can ask any farmer, ‘How’s the weather?’ You’ll get one of four answers: it's too hot, it’s too cold, it's too wet or it's too dry. The weather is never just what we want," said Henley.

Fewer strawberries for Henley means a decline in the overall amount of locally-grown strawberries available to consumers in Virginia Beach. His strawberries account for nearly one-third of the crop in the city.

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