Strawberry Everything!

This past Sunday on the way to church I noticed a little sign on the side of the road for u-pick strawberries. I know June is when local strawberries ripen, and it's definitely something I've been watching for, but seeing that little sign on the side of the road just made my spirit soar! Local strawberries are just amazing and don't compare to anything you can find in the stores, obviously. I look forward with such anticipation to berry season. So, of course, after church I got on the phone to check with Harvolds, the farm I wanted to try this year. Sure enough, it had just opened the day before. So, whatever was planned for Monday afternoon was bagged for we felt the pull of the strawberry fields. Erin shares my passion for farm fresh produce and for picking fruit.



Conveniently, Rollin fell asleep right as we rolled into the farm. PERFECT. He is ga ga over strawberries and would have an absolute blast eating as many as he could stuff in his mouth, but he would also put a huge damper on my productivity. Moriah is so dainty and afraid of getting dirty that she was a perfect little picker. She doesn't even like strawberries so she just kind of watched us.



To say the strawberries were divine is an understatement....oh my goodness...so wonderful. So good you want to kneel down and say a prayer of thanksgiving right there in the field. The little bushes were loaded with berries and the air smelled sweet. We picked for about an hour and then Rollin woke up. Game over. But in that time, we were able to pick 20 pounds of the most wonderful berries I have ever seen or tasted. So, it was a good day! We will most definitely return and Zig will most definitely be buying an extra freezer this summer. We still have blueberries, raspberries and blackberries to come. We were feeling pretty proud of ourselves when we went to Whole Foods later in the day and saw a sad little wilty half flat of conventional strawberries for $13 and sitting in our car we had the equivalent of 10 half flats and we only paid $17 and ours were even organic.



We came home and in the next few days proceeded to make strawberry shortcake, , strawberries and cream, strawberry pancakes, strawberry yogurt, peanut butter and strawberry sandwiches, and of course strawberry dacaris and smoothies..oh, and strawberry lemonade. Then we froze 5 big freezer bags full.



Life is good.