Strawberry picking

When my brother visited in the middle of June, he asked if the tomatoes I was slicing for dinner were from the grocery store or the farmer's market. Turns out, back in my home state of New Jersey, the tables at the farmers markets have been piled high with tomatoes for weeks, while the tomato plants in my garden hadn't even begun to flower. Such are the sorrows of a late-starting (and then short) growing season in Minnesota.

But our late start and cold spring meant that strawberries were still very much in abundance over the 4th of July weekend. (Whereas, the season had ended in New Jersey before I arrived in the latter half of June.) Oliver and I, a friend and her daughter drove out to a pick-your-own berry patch in Afton, which despite being a 30-minute drive from St. Paul, was in the countryside. A girl who got out of the car next to us wrinkled her nose at her mother and announced it stank. But standing amidst the strawberry fields where there wasn't a cow in sight, the air smelled sweet to me, like, well strawberries.

With our cardboard trays in hand, we walked out into the fields to start picking. I showed Oliver how to look for the berries and pick the red ones and then as an example, dropped a few in the little plastic container he had been given. He never really caught on to the concept of picking the berries, (he maybe picked one or two on his own) but he liked eating them! Any strawberry I put in his container, he picked up and shoved in his mouth, stem and leaves and all. In keeping with his favorite activity at home of dumping his buckets of toys, he also liked dumping his container of strawberries on to the ground. I had to keep a good eye on my tray of berries, or he would have dumped that too.

I picked as many strawberries as I could while Oliver happily and messily gorged himself on berries and wandered up and down the rows of plants. When it started to get too warm and Oliver began to whine, we packed up and went home. While our trip yielded just enough berries to share with friends and freeze leftovers to use later for smoothies and yogurt, the outing was a good length and intensity for toddlers.

As for me, our short trip revived childhood memories of strawberry picking with my dad and competing with my brother to pick the perfect strawberry to be designated as the "first strawberry of the season." If you find any pictures in old photo albums of either of us holding up a lone strawberry, that's what the big deal was about. My mom would then make enough jars of strawberry jam to last the year and therefore, I don't think it was until I was living on my own that I bought commercial-made jam. Someday I'll teach myself how to make jam, but until then, I hope a trip to the berry patch will become a yearly tradition I do with my own kids.