Causalities of the Strawberry Field

Yesterday was exactly what I needed, a day away from the grind of suburbia. People had been talking about Froberg farms. I have been to a few “farms” around here and they are typically yuppie tourist traps more than functional agricultural units. Much to my surprise this gem was only about 20 miles from home. Their main venue was pick your own strawberries. I debated about going thinking, they would be picked over, and at $1.50/lb how good could they be? Much to my surprise the plants were loaded with dark red delicious strawberries.

An elderly lady gave the little ones instruction to not pick the flowers and only the “really” red berries. We grabbed our buckets and walked out to a sprawling 15-20 acre field of raised rows of strawberries.

Erin caught right on. Most of the kids we went with lost interest after picking a pound or two. Erin returned with a full bucket, over 8 lbs! Eliza also enjoyed picking them. She had picked a half of bucket before she decided to taste test. The look on her face was purely divine. By the time we were done picking Eliza was just sitting on the ground eating them, covered in red juice.

She would not even let me carry her bucket to the pay station, it was over 5lbs. I told the guy who weighed us out to add another dozen to my order for the field casualties. He looked at Eliza stained in red strawberry juice and smiled and said “I don’t see anything”.

We shopped their vegetable market for a while and then went and sat under a sprawling oak and had some snacks. With all the development you rarely see a century oak like this one, the arms sprawling swooping to the ground. We sat under it for sometime enjoying the last days of beautiful weather as the kids bounced and played on the low branches.

Now I have 20 pounds of strawberries sitting in my kitchen. Tomorrow Kallie and I are going to take our first try at canning strawberry jam.