Main Street Produce Inc. in Santa Maria, CA, is in the fortunate position of being able to produce a strawberry crop from the same plantings over a very long season. “We are still picking on the plants that we planted back in October” and expect to continue harvesting from those same fields — always weather permitting — through December. The harvest from those fields started in March, giving the company 10 months of continuous production from the plants, according to President Paul Allen.

The share of the harvest going into the fresh market can fluctuate according to market demand, Allen told The Produce News. Fresh demand was strong all through June and up through the Fourth of July. Then it slowed down, so “we went freezer last week,” he said July 22.

It is pretty typical for fresh market demand — and prices — to drop after the Fourth of July. Until then, “we were pretty much going all fresh,” he said.

Paul Allen, president of Main Street Produce Inc.“Today we started picking some more fresh ... to fill some orders that we are getting,” Allen said. From here on out, “we expect to stay mostly fresh all the way through the fall and into December.”

The company’s strawberry acreage is up about 20 percent this year over last year, and for 2014 “our program will be pretty much the same as this year” in terms of both acreage and varieties, Allen said. “The varieties we have are Monterey, Albion and San Andreas. They have been holding up pretty well during the summer, and we are keeping the plants clean and healthy so that we can continue picking fresh all the way through December.”

So far, “we are pretty much on track” with regard to projected yields per acre, he said, “so we are hoping that the plants stay healthy and we can hit our target” for total yields for the year “by the end of December.”

Main Street was already “starting to work ground on our ranches for the 2014 crop,” he said.

The biggest challenge faced by the company this year has been labor availability, Allen said. “Labor has been pretty tight all year long.”

Fortunately, the company had invested this season in some harvesting trailers that span 12 beds. Pickers walk behind the trailers and place their boxes of packed clamshells on a conveyor on an arm of the machine as it moves through the field, eliminating the necessity of having to carry each box to the end of the row. “We purchased eight of the machines to cover our acreage this year, and that has been a big, big help,” Allen said. Due to the high cost of the machines, they don’t reduce harvesting costs, but they reduce the amount of labor needed to harvest the crop by 30 to 40 percent.

“Where I used to need 100 people picking, now I need 60 to 70 people” to harvest the crop, Allen said. Still, it has been a challenge finding enough workers. “Fortunately, we have been able to have enough labor, but there were a few days that we were looking for additional help,” he said.

Not only is labor tight, but labor costs have gone up, “and I don’t expect it to be any better next year. Probably labor is going to be in short supply next year also.”