Strawberry Pickin'

I have fond memories of picking strawberries as a little girl with my mom. My preschool teacher mom usually takes her class to a great strawberry farm each year and I have been wanting to go for awhile. After reading my friends, Emily and Kristie's blog post about their picking experience, I was dying to go this year, I could almost taste those juicy strawberries! Well last month, on the way to visit my parents (while Mike was out of town), Daniel and I stopped at the farm my mom has told me about for years. My expectations were met exceedingly! It was one of the best afternoons I've had this year so far! I think I'll try to make it a tradition.


This strawberry lady greets you as you arrive at the farm.


Even though it was the middle of May (typically late for strawberry season), the bushes were still laden with the juicy goodness.



As soon as we got to our assigned row, Daniel knew instinctively what to do, almost before I could get my camera out, he had picked two strawberries, and you can tell by the picture, they were SO juicy. (He has crazy hair because of sunscreen:), and this is a camera phone picture, I snapped it to send to Mike so he could see what we were doing).


We were given this flag to mark where we stopped so the next people who came behind us, would know where to start. Daniel of course thought the flag was for his pleasure. Haha!




They were SO sweet and juicy! Mmmmmmm, Mmmmmmmm!



So irresistible! And just so you know, we were allowed to pick and eat, I guess they figure that into the price. :)


Taking a quick rest until he spotted.......



this! A "tractor" (or a Gator Utility Vehicle-I know this because I am quickly being educated about all the different types of "tractors", we have a couple books about them. If you're around Daniel long, you'll learn in no time tractors are one of his favorite things!)



He wasn't that far from me, so I just let him play on the GUV while I finished picking. He was SO happy to sit on and pretend to drive it!



SOOOOOo I don't really know what I was thinking or why I thought I had to fill up my basket COMPLETELY and almost overflowing??? I picked 2 pints (that is approximately 32 cups). It did come out to be less expensive than buying strawberries in the store. I had 2 days to do something with all these strawberries before we traveled again and I didn't really want to freeze them. I much prefer fresh strawberries to frozen.



This strawberry farm also had livestock. We took a look at the long horned steer, I enjoyed feeding him a clump of clover, a treat for him according to the guy working there. Daniel didn't want to feed him.



More tractors!



There were goats, turkeys, a pig, some calves, a peacock and several other caged birds.




Daniel was in tractor heaven!! Haha!!





Can you just about hear Daniel saying, "MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooo?" He was very excited to see all these cows, and they were very curious about him, a lot of them came over to him. Momma wasn't too sure about the close proximety to all those cows and it was time to head to Mimi and Papa's house so we loaded up and said goodbye to the best strawberry farm I've ever been to. (I really haven't been to that many but I think it is wonderful and would highly reccomend it!)



I had planned to make strawberry jelly with all the strawberries. My grandmother makes the best strawberry jelly every year and I really wanted to try it. I have never attempted to make jelly or can anything before. I asked my grandmother for her recipe and she told me she just uses the recipe for "freezer jam" on the box of Sure-gel. I needed to triple the recipe for the amount of strawberries I had. This is basically the recipe that I used. If you want to try this, I would follow the instructions that come inside the box of Sure-gel, and remember, do not put glass jars in the freezer, they will break. I don't really know why you would want to freeze this because it is so good you will just want to gobble it up as fast as you can!



It is VERY tasty on homemade biscuits (Bisquick version) as evidenced by the next three pictures.







Next year, I will plan to make this with some of my freezer jam.