Saskatoon-area farm reeling after hailstorm wipes out strawberry crops

What should have been a routine start to the work day quickly turned into heartbreak for Chloe Kook and her co-workers, who found much of their strawberry crop decimated when they arrived at their Saskatoon-area farm Monday morning.

“When we showed up, we saw a lot more hail damage than we were expecting,” Kook, manager of Prairie Pathways farm, told Global News in an interview.

Kook says she was greeted by ice pellets still lingering around the ruined crop from the previous night’s ice storm, and that the crop is so badly damaged it is unlikely to recover this season.

“Everything got hit on the farm,” she said.

The ruin was a tough sight for the farm’s former owners, who had grown strawberries in those fields for over 20 years and had gone over to assess the damage.

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“He was in shock,” said Kook. “He shared with us that this is the worst he’s ever seen it.”

Before Sunday’s hailstorm, the farm had already been contending with a tough growing season filled with windy and cloudy conditions. But the storm was the farm’s final straw, leaving them with no option but to pivot just days before its opening weekend.

“We’re actually calling it our ‘berry sorry’ weekend,” said Kook, adding that workers are keeping their spirits high and are excited to open for the public despite the heartbreaking turn of events.

“We’ll be doing local food, fresh veggies, we’ll have some snacks, concessions, ice cream, stuff like that.”

Kook says the farm is also feeling the community’s support, which is pushing it to stay open.

“When we posted the official update, we got a lot of support from the community, saying, ‘This is awful, so sorry this happened to you, we’ll still come out.’”

Meanwhile, just over a kilometre down the road, a local farm and distillery say they were spared from the hail.

Despite this, Cote says the farm has been contending with unseasonable weather in other ways, such as a delay in the peony growing season, pushing buds into early July.

“With this rain … these peonies were so close to buds. For so long, we were expecting when that heat would hit, just a weekend ago, that they would just explode. And then we get the time frame crunch,” she said.