berry pickin'

Last Monday was berry picking day.  And it was a good one.  Perfect day for it of course.  Not hot, a bit breezy to keep the bugs away, not raining.  It would have been hard to ask for better.  

And the berries are ohss-sssoooo-good.  Milkshakes, anyone?  I brought my camera along so I could pretend to do something important like take pictures but really just slack off on the real work.

Everyone set right to work and had a lovely time.  Except this guy…  Can you say stickerpotomous?   (if not, you should practice, it is a very fun word)  He was quite anti-picking.  He is not a picker (not even the nose).  Okay, he did join in occasionally when threatened within an inch of his life, but it only lasted so long.  And my enthusiasm for threatening his well being and bodily harm only lasts so long and only holds so much weight when I never actually carry through.  In this case, I suppose not following through on discipline is a good thing…..  He is still awfully cute, though.

It really didn't take that long to fill up buckets of buckets worth of berries.  And the pickin' was easy really.  We ended up with some stained hands - nothing like my hands after pitting and cutting cherries, but stained nonetheless.

Playing in the fields was a fun pastime for some as well.  Like hurtles, but different.

Between our two families we picked - I think - 18 buckets of berries.  Not bad for an hour and a halfish of work.

And now what to do with them all!  Some baskets went to family members unable to join in the fun (or misery, in Cade's estimation…) and the others were washed, de-greened and frozen.  Still others were made into jam (two batches of cooked, two batches of freezer).

Some jam went to Kim and family.  The freezer jam didn't go into nice jars, and it is officially called "Tante Carlita's really horribly packaged but hopefully incredibly tasty freezer Strawberry Jam" (Tante - german; Carlita - spanish… it is my "name" for the Loewens)

Plenty of them were consumed straight-up and lots were made into milkshakes.  The stuff of heaven.

Lucy developed her own strawberry milkshake recipe.

It all was so tasty, it might be necessary to go back and pick some more.