The frost never materialized last Friday so the row cover work was wasted.  Better safe than sorry.  But Monday night we put them out again and the temp dropped to 29-30. The next morning one section of 3 rows that we didn't have enough cover for had dead flowers from the freeze.  We left the covers on again for the expected frost Tuesday night but it never dropped under 40.   This morning I frantically worked to finish up version 1 of the rowcover reel and we tried it out.  Lot of trouble with the covers snagging anything sharp and difficulty with the reel evenly filling up with the cover.  We did half the field, then stopped because we were tearing the covers too much.  Manually removed the other half, then spent the afternoon modifying the machine.  Tried version 2 on the 2nd half and it worked much better, but still had some snag areas that caught the covers.

The field is loaded down with green strawberries and we are picking a few handfuls a day now.  We are looking good for an opening the second week of April, maybe even the first weekend. 

Now I have to build a shielded sprayer to go after all the weeds cropping up in the middles.  Killing off the ryegrass in early winter was a big mistake as it allowed the weeds to germinate in the middles this spring and now they have to be dealt with.