As the annual Strawberry Festival begins, it appears strawberries, once a staple on Vashon, are making a comeback on the island.

Decades ago, Vashon Island was covered with strawberry farms, and that sprouted the Strawberry Festival in 1909. In fact, Vashon was named “the greatest strawberry growing section of the State of Washington” in the Seattle Republican newspaper in 1911.

But the strawberry growing industry on Vashon started declining after World War II, when cheap refrigerated transport spread over the nation’s new highway system, corporate farms grew, child labor was outlawed and many of the Island’s Japanese-American strawberry farmers failed to return from wartime internment camps.

A few stragglers, mainly Japanese-American farmers, persisted in growing the luscious red berries in Vashon’s welcoming and sandy soil as late as the mid 1980s. But after that, strawberries virtually disappeared from island fields as residential property expanded and pine trees filled the gaps. Strawberry Festival treat purveyors were forced to import fruit for the annual summer celebration.

Fast forward and we find those gorgeous red berries are making a slow, steady comeback on the Strawberry Festival scene, oddly spawned out of controversy.

A few years ago, members of Vashon’s chamber of commerce, which puts on the annual festival, considered removing Strawberry from the name and calling it simply Vashon Festival in an attempt at truth in advertising.

The opposition was so vigorous that then newly minted Chamber Director Jim Marsh stepped in, asking vendors and merchants to bring strawberries back to the festival. “People have stepped up,” said Marsh recently, noting that several groups featured island-grown strawberries at the 2013 festival and the Vashon Island Growers Association (VIGA) added to that mix a booth featuring Vashon-grown berries in 2014. And at this weekend’s festival, Sun Island Farm will offer up strawberries grown at its large patch on Maury Island.

But the real story is how strawberries are returning to Vashon-Maury farms stronger than any time since Yoniechi Matsuda harvested his last crop behind K2.

Journey to Maury Island and step behind an unobtrusive sign for Sun Island Farm, where the scene opens to a maze of outbuildings, fruit trees, rolling animal pens and pristine vegetable patches. This is where Joe and Celina Yarkin have planted their flagship strawberry patch — Joe’s current horticultural obsession.

For nearly 15 years, the Yarkins have shared a fascination with the scientific method of farming, experimenting with fruit trees and greenhouse vegetables, carefully grafting one plant to a sturdier stalk to amplify disease and weather resistance. Out of this fascination was born a trial patch of strawberries in 2007. Already well established with their booth at the Vashon Farmers Market, the Yarkins started selling their fresh-picked strawberries in 2008 and they were an instant hit.

Today, that small patch has grown to dominate Sun Island Farm, with a special breed of organic strawberries.

“Once you start (growing strawberries) it’s like starting a fire,” Joe Yarkin said.  “And, by specializing,” he adds, “we’re less likely to forget them.”

Growing strawberries on Vashon isn’t simple, though, and the Yarkins have been met with a variety of challenges.

“Everything wants to eat strawberries,” Yarkin observes, “and robins are the worst.  But we’ve learned to live with the fact that we share with the robins.”

He’s applied clever, natural tactics to reduce crop loss by introducing violet green swallows to ward off other birds and dragon flies to eat offending insects.

“They are our allies here,” he said. “And they put on quite a show with their lace wings shimmering as they eat the aphids and swallows dart among them.”

With a shortage of bees on Vashon, the Yarkins have found strawberries help by attracting pollinators. Bumblebees are everywhere at Sun Island.

“The bumblebees do most of the work here,” Yarkin said. But he’s giving them too much credit.

While the Yarkins plant and monitor the growing of their proprietary variety of strawberries, the entire family gets into the picking process. One recent innovation is a solar-powered electric tractor that allows the human picker to lie flat on his or her stomach while the machine propels them slowly along the berry rows.

Yarkin heard about the machine from a fellow farmer he met in the Antarctic, where he sometimes works installing solar panels, and quickly shipped one from the East when he learned the picking method “is five times as fast as walking and bending,” he said. And it’s an exciting enticement to the couple’s three daughters, who jump at the chance to pick with the contraption.

“Berries must be picked in the evening when they’re cool so they remain fresh for delivery to market the next day,” Yarkin said.

The Yarkins pick twice weekly to assure optimum freshness for local customers.

“Our advantage is that we can get berries to the Vashon market fresh,” he said.

The taste difference between locally grown berries and those shipped from afar is immediately obvious.

“Berries shipped from California and Mexico have been grown with pesticides,” Yarkin said. That not only affects the taste, but long shipping times also reduce the available nutrients in imported berries.

Strawberries are also being grown right on Vashon Highway. Mike Biel, who owns The Country Store, added a one-third-acre u-pick strawberry patch to the store’s eclectic 10-acre property two years ago. He specializes in two different varieties: Rainier strawberries that ripen in mid-June and continue bearing through August and Seascape berries that bear madly in June.

“By offering these two varieties, we are able to provide our customers a longer u-pick season,” Biel said.

For just $4 a pound, families can chow down on sweet locally grown and pesticide-free berries they personally selected.

Mike Biel smiles big when he says, “We have had a fantastic response from both islanders and off-island tourists. And we haven’t had any  leftovers to sell.”

In fact, Biel encourages prospective u-pickers to call the store in advance in case they’ve had to close the field for a day of rest.

Biel plans to double or triple the size of his u-pick patch next year, and he’s considering adding the historic Marshall strawberry, once grown and well-loved on Vashon, to his collection.

“There’s a growing community of consumers on Vashon who prefer to eat local produce, including strawberries,” noted Yarkin.  “Eating locally means eating fresher, getting more nutrition and consuming unique varieties of fruits and vegetables that are unavailable anywhere else.”

The Yarkins and  Biel are just two examples of island farmers who are bringing strawberries back to Vashon, and they both plan to ramp up their production.

When it comes to the Strawberry Festival, Marsh, at the chamber, said that there’s great interest in bringing local berries to the celebration, but there are challenges as well, including that many varieties of strawberries ripen only in June.

But there will be a clear red berry presence at this weekend’s festival, with Yarkin selling his strawberries at a booth for Sun Island Farm.

The Vashon-Maury Heritage Association will also offer its strawberry shortcake, and the Teens in the Field will use Washington berries to make Italian soda-like strawberry drinks.

Marsh said the chamber is continuing its call to bring strawberries of any kind to Vashon’s summer celebration.

“We hope others will be inspired to figure out how to make it happen.”

— Susan McCabe is an island writer and Voice of Vashon’s station manager.

The carnival will be open from noon to 10 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. It will be located across the street from Ober Park.