Berry fun!

We finally got around to checking out one of the local u-pick farms that seem to be so popular here. My friend Courtney and her kids joined us for the outing. It was a little farm just about 20 minutes from our house, but you'd have thought we left the county for sure. It's just a little mom and pop operation, not at all commercialized, like so many of these things have become.

It was so peaceful, just wandering around the farm and picking whatever we wanted. You bring your own buckets, which they weigh on the way in and out. You pay for whatever you pick. We joked they should have weighed the kids as well, as more than a few items were sampled along the way.

We started in the strawberries. They were the tiny "fairy berries", so sweet and juicy. Initially it felt like a lot of work picking them for such a tiny berry, but they are so delicious, it's worth it. They're so much sweeter than the ones from the grocery and don't have that big hollow center. Hadley was a pickin' fool in the strawberry rows. She was bent over with such intent, parting the leaves, making sure she got them all. She plucked them off and plopped them right in her bucket. She was even picking the green ones.

After that, we headed to the raspberry rows. They had several different varieties, including golden raspberries. The plants were a little bushier and thicker, and since the berries are smaller, a little harder for the kids to spot. We had to point a few more of them out, but they were still able to pick them. I looked down at one point and noticed Hadley's bucket was filled with the rotting ones from the ground. Of course, those are easier to pick! We had to dump her bucket and start over. She was disappointed since she'd taken the time to collect them, but she kept right on picking once I pointed them out on the bushes.

 

Wyatt wasn't as into it as Hadley. About half way through, he announced he was ready to go home. I let him play with my phone to satisfy him for a while. When I asked the kids to pose for a photo with their picks, he proudly held up the phone. Go figure. We filled our buckets until we were tired of picking, then decided to call it a day. We had to wipe the evidence from the kids' faces before we went back up to the front to pay.

We also got some cucumber and some rhubarb. They were growing so many more delicious things, like spinach and swiss chard, but we could tell the kids had reached their limit.  All in all, it was a great day and we'll probably head back sometime to get more veggies. The strawberries were gone by the next morning. Most of the raspberries and rhubarb have been frozen, but I did make us some scrumptious raspberry lemon muffins so we could enjoy some of our picking efforts. Yum!