If every cloud has a silver lining, then the upside of a cold May is a particularly scrumptious crop of strawberries.

Despite hail, rain and even snow in parts, the strawberry season has finally arrived.

And consumers have been promised that this year’s crop is “superb” – with bigger, sweeter and juicier berries thanks to the recent unseasonable weather.

Eamon Kehoe, Teasgasc’s soft fruit specialist adviser, says the cold weather this year enhanced the yield, quality and flavour of the crop and even improves the shape of the strawberries.

“Anything I’ve seen over the last month and a half is fantastic. A much better crop than last year and it looks really superb.

"It’s hard to explain it – even the plant itself looks healthy, lush and with lots of flowers. People are in for a real treat.

“The cold nights releases the sugars,” revealed Eamonn Crean of Greenhill Farm near Enniscorthy, Co Wexford.

His operation is one of the biggest fruit farms in the country – with a footprint of almost one and a half times the size of Croke Park and a staff of up to 150.

Normally he would already be “flat to the mat” with the start of season, with his six children all helping out.

But this year, a cooler winter and spring led to flowering and ripening to occur a little more gradually than usual.

“It’s like putting two gates on the M50. We’re between seven and 10 days behind,” said Eamonn.

“So now we’ll be flat to the mat next week and at the beginning of June instead.”

And with a forecast for high pressure set to come in towards the end of next week, he said: “That will be opening the gates of the M50. It means you’ve to get up in the morning and you’ve two days’ work to do in one.”

But predictions of a bumper crop come with a worry.

Eamonn revealed he has been having trouble in recruiting enough students for roadside sales despite advertising for the past three weeks.

”Where are the Irish students? They’re not applying,” he said, adding that he has only filled half the 30 sales jobs available across a number of counties, with other fruit growers sharing a similar tale.

“You’re paid for every minute you work and all you need to be is to be bright and bubbly and to be able to do stock.”

He had hoped that people who had been laid off because of Covid might have applied for work but believes the Covid payment has made it less attractive.

“They might make €450 a week with me, but they get €350 from the payment, so they might say to themselves it’s not worth the trouble.”

He believes "the penny hasn’t dropped” with a lot of students that the fruit-growing sector is an industry with a bright future and one in which it is possible to do well and to get promotions.

“Traditionally it was very low-paid work and the kids were doing it. But now they’re all being paid properly and there’s opportunities for people to get on in life and make good wages. This is not recognised,” he says.

He counts himself among the third generation of soft fruit growers – though the previous generations produced mainly for the jam industry and so the skill of the pickers did not matter as much then as it did now.

“Looks sell – it’s the world we live in,” said Eamonn – saying that berries need to be visually appealing and that the longer you leave your fruit uneaten in the fridge, the more the skill of the picker becomes apparent because a damaged berry will decay faster.

“You can teach the job in a couple of days but we’d see picking not so much as labour any more – it needs a two-year apprenticeship,” he said.

“They pick around the berry and cut the stem and lift it without touching the berry.

"Then you have to size-coordinate the berries into the punnets, estimate the weight – and you have to pick anything from 20kg to 40kg an hour and to be able to do that process without thinking.”

These highly skilled pickers can make up to €800 a week and are highly sought across Europe, he said.