Hailstones the size of ‘‘chocolate Lindt balls’’ hammered down on a Longford, Victoria berry business last Thursday 28 January, causing at least $20,000 in crop losses.
Longford Berries is a small local operation that produces gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries and blueberries and owner Dennis Betts said they had lost most of the crop.
The operation supplies a small amount of fruit to Youngs Vegie Shed but Mr Betts said mostly it had become a local and tourist ‘‘pick your own’’ berry attraction.
All the berries, bar a small corner of the blueberry crops were damaged and will need to be destroyed.
Mr Betts said the farm was experiencing the best strawberry season it had seen in a few years but said he’d lost about 200kgs of the fruit during the freak storm.
He also lost gooseberry, raspberry and blackberry crops.
Mr Betts said if the weather cleared up in the next six weeks he could see some more strawberries coming through but said otherwise the season was done.
The storm also damaged some of next year’s plants.
Source -freshplaza.com
