Strawberry Picking

The first week of June, or thereabouts is strawberry picking time in Ohio. Suter’s Farms is the local farm where my family has frequented for year upon years, gathering enough strawberries to last us well into the dog days of summer and beyond.

Grandma would load us kids up into the car ~~and let us steer the car down the country roads~~ and drive us safely to the strawberry fields. We would spill out of the car, grab a bucket, and off we’d go. I remember picking strawberries on our hands and knees, crawling over straw and mud, and finding red gems growing just beneath the huge leaves. We were Grandma’s little workers. The pay-off was well worth the work. Strawberries in our cereal, strawberries on our ice cream, sugared strawberries, strawberry jam, strawberry shortcake, strawberry ice cream, and when we were sick of them, we would freeze the extra, and fish them out when we needed a fix. Sweet sweet memories of my childhood.

She is working hard and loving it!

This year we decided to rekindle the tradition with the youngest ones in the family. We loaded them up in their car seats (oh how the times have changed), put on our sun-block (grandma never used the stuff), grabbed some buckets, and picked our rows – some things will never change! We ended up with 5 buckets of fresh, sweet, tiny strawberries.

*See, loving it!*

I have already made a batch of strawberry rhubarb bars (the rhubarb may or may not have been stolen from the neighbors yard…) and Carter has already eaten a whole bucket himself! Strawberry jam is on the to-do list for tomorrow.