N.S. farmers looking for pickers to harvest bumper berry crop

It’s a race against time in Webster Farms’ strawberry fields in Nova Scotia.

“You can let a field go for four days but that is pushing it,” says farm manager Jordan Eyamie.

Ripe berries don't wait for anyone, so the rush is on for Eyamie to harvest the nearly 20 acres of berries at the farm in Cambridge. Finding local help has been nearly impossible.

“We used to get kids come. Even three years ago I had people call me wanting to pick but now I get maybe one phone call a year,” Eyamie says.

Eyamie now employs temporary foreign workers from Mexico to get the job done.

“Some of these guys are making over $20 an hour, between $20 and $30,” she says.

Without them?

“This would not get picked. There is no way,” Eyamie says.

Temporary Foreign Workers pick strawberries in a field in Cambridge, N.S. (Source: Jonathan MacInnis/CTV News Atlantic)

It’s not just her farm; bumper crops are growing across the province.

“It was a good spring. It wasn’t too hot, it wasn’t wet, it wasn’t too cold. It was just good growing conditions for the spring and so everything just came a little bit early,” says William Spurr, president of Horticulture Nova Scotia.

Spurr grows berries on about two acres on his farm in Wilmot where those good growing conditions produced ripe berries up to 10 days early.

“I wasn’t expecting it to come as early as it did,” he said.

A Temporary Foreign Worker picks strawberries in a field in Cambridge, N.S. (Source: Jonathan MacInnis/CTV News Atlantic)

Luckily, Eyamie was ready, meaning the $650,000 strawberry crop will mostly get picked.

The workers will be harvesting the fields until early Monday evening and the strawberries they're picking will be on store shelves as early as Tuesday.

For more Nova Scotia news visit our dedicated provincial page.