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Happy New Year! We look forward to sharing news with you again this year and we are committed to providing you with timely and relevant information. If there are issues or topics we are not covering that you would like to see us add this year, please respond to this email with your thoughts and requests.
For more information, including crop and weather reports, please scroll below.
Florida: The weather has been somewhat stable, providing for consistent harvesting and good quality fruit, despite the cold snap that hit over the weekend. The plants are very healthy and volume is expected to continue to increase as the weather warms. Daytime temperatures are expected to get up to the 80’s by the end of this week which may affect fruit firmness, so crews will be on a shorter harvesting schedule to prevent bruising and over ripe fruit. Counts are averaging 16-18 in the one pound packs.
Mexico: We have seen some very good quality coming in from Mexico despite the warm afternoon temperature shifts we have seen lately. Harvest crews are focused on getting fruit off the plants in the morning and cooled before the afternoon heat sets in. Seeing some white shoulders, but QA team working with each ranch to ensure consistent color and quality. Counts range in the low 20’s. There have been some transportation disruptions due to gas prices resulting in issues at the border. We expect this to be a short term problem and are not seeing delays in fruit deliveries yet.
Oxnard: This district has been getting some of the rain hitting the California coast over the last week with some damage reported. Fields were stripped last week and over the weekend, since the next round of rain is expected this week. Crews are able to clean up in-between which should result in a quick recovery and back into harvesting once we get through it. The quality has been excellent with the new short day varieties here in Oxnard and fruit size is 12-14.
Blueberries: Fruit continues to arrive from Chile, but the volume is expected to taper off slightly in the next couple of weeks balancing out the market after a sluggish beginning to 2017.
For up-to-date weather conditions in all of our growing regions, click on the region below. Wunderground.com is our go-to weather resource for fast and reliable weather updates.
We are happy to report that our Holiday promotion was a huge success in reaching consumers and influencing purchases despite winter weather and limited volume available of our fresh berries. We look forward to sharing our newest promotional offerings with you as we shift some of our focus this year taking a deeper dive into the over 100,000 shoppers in our database and the over 160,000 connections we have through social media channels. We have collected demographics, shopping behavior, berry preferences, and more on consumers across the country that buy our berries, so now we are focused on building deeper relationships with this audience to help us continue to build our program, database of followers and ultimately brand loyalists.
Please send us the contact name and email address of your marketing staff so we can sign them up to receive our consumer blog posts. You can also subscribe to the consumer blog which will give you a sneak peek into how we are connecting with shoppers every week!
In the meantime, during January we are helping consumers get back on track after the holidays with healthy snack ideas and smoothies, while throwing in a little bacon along the way.
Homemade Blueberry Cookie Bars
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Homemade Blueberry Bars Inspired By LARABAR
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Avocado Toast with Strawberries and Bacon
