Berry Fun

On Friday, Rachel, Geral and I joined some other friends to pick strawberries at a local farm. The girls were prepared with hats and sunscreen but our water jug leaked all 2 gallons of ice water into the back of the van. We bailed it out of the car instead of drinking it. On the plus side, my carpeting hasn't been so clean in years. I forgot to get my camera out while we were in the field but the girls worked hard and were proud of the berries they got. They were ready for a drink and a graham cracker by the time we got done.

You can see how sweaty and flushed they were. It was a hot and humid day. We had sweat dripping off of us as we picked it was nice to have a rest in the shade. The farm also had tart cherries ready for picking so we decided to get some of those too. The girls definitely preferred standing in the shade of the tree to pick instead of bending over in the hot sun.

Rachel and Geral show off their pickings with the friends that were with us. As moms, we particularly enjoyed the girls common fashion sense in that they like to play with patterns and color. Hey, they dress themselves so we don't have to do it. That works!

My older kids were quite disappointed that I did not allow them to skip school to join us on the berry picking adventure. I only picked a few cherries because I hadn't done them before and wasn't sure how much time and effort was involved in preparing to store them. Sarah and I found that it did not take all that much time to pit them and prepare them to be frozen so Saturday morning we went back for more. When I asked Geral if she wanted to pick cherries she said, "No strawberries!" While she enjoyed the outing she hadn't forgotten how hot she had gotten. The little girls loved being the "experts" showing their older siblings the ropes at the farm. I missed getting a picture of Steven but he helped along with Sarah and William.

When we were done, William insisted that we needed to pick some strawberries too. Sarah and Steven took Rachel and Geral back to the barn while he and I spent 15 minutes picking strawberries. He was funny, hunting down the most unusually shaped berries he could find. He thought the cherries were boring to pick because they were too uniform to be interesting. We wouldn't want it to seem like work would we?

End result. Twelve pints of strawberry jam and 5 quarts of cherries.