Local store shelves remain stocked with fresh produce even as rain continues to fall across the Central Coast. Farmers and produce suppliers say it all comes down to good planning.
Michael Wolfe has owned the Avocado Shack in Morro Bay since 2019 and says he always prepares ahead of the rain.
“I’m bringing in broccoli and cauliflower and just different things like that, that was picked two days before the rain because after the rain, it’s all hard to get out of the fields. The prices go through the roof, the quality is poor," Wolfe said.
Wolfe says he’s learned to strategically buy things to get the best quality and to avoid challenges due to the weather.
“Fields get saturated, it's hard for the equipment to get out there to harvest it, and of course, the people, the workers, those hardworking people out there picking our crops, it's just tough and so like I said, you’ll just see shortages, you’ll see higher prices cause there’s only so much of it,” Wolfe said.
He adds that he likes to source his produce locally, from Arroyo Grande Berries and Traceland Organics in Cayucos.
"Our main crops are asparagus, avocados, we have a little bit of citrus and subtropical, a fun one called a white sapote, but we’re actually in the middle of all our seasons right now,” said Jesse Trace, who works on the farm with his family.
He says avocados need significant groundwater, so rain is beneficial, but a big storm all at once can be a problem.
That's why they focus on the landscape to make sure the soil is resilient to any kind of weather.
“We got our windbreak, we've got our cover crop in between our avocados that holds the soil together, we got water bars on the roads that don’t let any of the roads erode,” Trace said.
He adds that when the rain stops, they check the crops to make sure the soil and plants are in good shape.
Wolfe says that he is always keeping an eye on the forecast to make sure the produce he gets is fresh.
