Country Life Wednesday, July 15, 2020 • lyndentribune.com • ferndalerecord.com
Dairy • A12 Gardening • A11 FFA/4-H • A11
Nooksack Valley FFA team wins state helping Good To Go Meat Pies
In early sun at 6 a.m. Randy Kraght loads up his pickup with raspberries already picked for Barbie’s Berries fresh sales of the day. (Calvin Bratt/Lynden Tribune)
If weather stays good, raspberry crop can be too From left, the Nooksack Valley FFA Marketing Plan team that took first in state consisted of Aubree Bird, Nikki Vermeer and Faith Bartl. (Courtesy photo)
Marketing Plan team kept working through COVID challenges By Hailey Palmer hailey@lyndentribune.com
EVERSON — The coronavirus may have put a stop to just about every high school activity this past spring, but students of the Nooksack Valley FFA chapter got their chance to compete virtually in state competition anyway — and they did well. The FFA Marketing Plan team presented its work to a panel of judges over Zoom and
won the state competition while a Milk Quality and Products team entered testing online and placed fourth in the state. The Marketing Plan students were Aubree Bird, Faith Bartl and Nicci Vermeer. On Milk Quality and Products were Gaby and Andrew Levine, Colten Cuperus, Riley VanBoven and Grace Shintaffer. Advisor Rhonda Juergens said her students were very fortunate, and thankful, they were still able to compete for a trophy in the middle of the pandemic. “It was pretty neat the state allowed for virtual opportunities for the kids,” Juergens said. “It really took a lot of work on their part, so the kids still had the opportunity.”
The Marketing Plan team worked with Holly Bumford, owner of Good To Go Meat Pies locally, and developed an extensive plan for that business. Juergens said the three girls on the team did intensive research not only on the business itself, but also on the surrounding market in order to find a way to improve and remarket for Good To Go Meat Pies. “Our kids focused on rather than having pasties in the freezer, let’s look at how we can remarket those frozen pasties,” she said. “They talked about putting family packs together so that people could come and just grab.” The team also looked at goSee FFA on A11
Growers battled cool and rainy conditions through last week By Calvin Bratt editor@lyndentribune.com
WHATCOM — Dry weather to start this week raised hopes that the 2020 raspberry crop can indeed turn a corner toward quality and profitability. The first two to three weeks weren’t so good. Too much moisture and coolness have until now spoiled — literally, in some cases — the big commercial raspberry harvest that began in late June. “It’s got to straighten out one of these days,” said veteran grower Randy Kraght on Monday. “Hopefully we’re over the hump and these guys can have a fairly decent season.” Kraght is in a different situation than most other local grow-
ers in that his family’s Barbie’s Berries 25-acre operation is mostly fresh-market, in contrast to the vast commercial mechanical harvest for freezing taken from about 9,000 acres in Whatcom County. Still, Kraght knows the horticulture of berrying from his start with Curt Maberry Farm many years ago. It seemed on Monday that the mold — botrytis, to be technical — was receding, and the weather forecast for this week was “getting better,” Kraght said. Ideal conditions, he said, would be about 70 degrees with a little breeze. At this point local raspberries can do just fine without any more rain, being fed by drip irrigation at their roots anyway. The first nine days of July brought far from an ideal scenario, with well over an inch and a half of rain and average daytime high temps way too cool at around 66. See Raspberries on A11
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