It has been two years since Pacific AgPak, a leading provider of plastic consumer packaging for strawberries and other produce, relocated from Exeter, CA, to a new 50,000-square-foot facility in Watsonville. The facility has enabled Pacific AgPak to improve customer service and reduce turn-around times for strawberry shippers, according to President Dave Baum.

Can you imagine an amateur community choir from Aptos, CA (population 6,600), 10 miles up the coast from Watsonville, being invited to perform in the Vatican as part of an observance marking the 500th anniversary of the founding of the Vatican Choir?

The California Strawberry Commission’s is focusing on integrating many of its marketing efforts for 2014 around two themes, according to Carolyn O’Donnell, communications director. One is “365 days of California strawberries” and the other is “your life becomes better just by adding California strawberries.”

The Produce News talked to O’Donnell Jan. 24, one day after the commission’s budget and activity plans for the 2014 fiscal year had been adopted in board meetings.

CBS Farms LLC in Watsonville, CA, which has strawberry production in both Oxnard, CA, and Watsonville, has a new grower in Oxnard this year and has added organic strawberries to its Oxnard program.

Previously, the company had organic strawberries from Watsonville but not from Oxnard. “Now we are going to have organics year-round,” said Charlie Staka, director of sales.

CBS handles strawberry sales for Watsonville-based Colleen Strawberries Inc. and Beach Street Farms LLC.

More than 100 years ago, farmer William Urschel, who grew gooseberries in the Midwest, designed the Gooseberry Snipper to trim both the stem and blossom end from a gooseberry, which was a popular crop at the time. That led to the launching of a machinery company in Valparaiso, IN, that would soon be known as Urschel Laboratories Inc.

“Doing that by hand was very labor-intensive,” said Rick Urschel, current president of the firm. “The machine did the work of 100 laborers.”

Yet another fierce storm has hit the Northeast, this one shutting down ports and closing produce terminal markets early. The storm was expected to blast Boston on Thursday night and continue throughout much of New England throughout Thursday and Friday.