Strawberry picking

Last year, after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I became much more aware of how my family eats and the seasonality of our food. It was the first time that I made an attempt at getting our food locally and in season, and then processing it somehow so we could enjoy it the rest of the year. I started small, with strawberries. My family loves strawberry jam and it is something I know how to make. I thought that I could at least make all our own jam for the year with strawberries that we picked ourselves when they were in season here (not Florida or California or somewhere in the southern hemisphere). But I quickly realized that I had absolutely no idea how much jam we actually ate in a year. So I took a wild guess and made up our jam. Well, it only lasted until about October! Then we were stuck buying jam again. Oh well, I thought. I'll do better next year now that I know.

Well it's next year now. We have been picking three times and I have yet to make a single jar of jam. Because I haven't wanted to buy strawberries out of season, we haven't had them for a long time. Now that we have them again, the kids are devouring them before I can do anything with them! And I'm starting to get a little panicked! This is Memorial Day weekend. There is a possibility that our local fields could get "picked out" before I get to them again. Hopefully we will get at least one more visit to the fields before all the strawberries are gone for the year.

Here are two of my workers busily picking (and eating) their way through the strawberry field on our first visit there this year.
My girls and some of our friends that went with us.

M with his prize strawberry.

J just starting to pick.

C with a carton that never seemed to get any fuller even though she was picking just as steadily as the others.

T before she discovered that there were strawberries on those plants.
Apparently I forgot to take any pictures of all the berries we picked. Oh well. Next time.

Have a great weekend!