But Their Fruit Sure Looks Nice In My Freezer
Much to my dismay our strange reminiscent of the Little Ice Age spring delayed the normal strawberry season in our parts. I grow enough strawberries to fill part of our normal yearly consumption of the little ambrosia-like fruits, but as I live with three fructose-craving versions of the Cookie Monster, I have to supplement my yearly supply.
Enter Carver Farms. Over the last fifteen years I have been frequenting this little 80 acre U-pick spread for strawberries. They offer other crops too, everything from beans to Christmas trees, but I usually only visit the patch of produce abundance that sits on the Washington and Idaho state lines for strawberries.
My youngest kid can really put the fruit away, like, I have watched him sit and eat an entire bowl of frozen strawberries for a snack. His favorite sandwich is a peanut butter, salami, and mom's strawberry jam monstrosity. It's like an Italian Elvis sandwich of horror or something, sweetened with the tears of a thousand strawberries. Gross.
Anyway, picking season kicked off while I was on vacation, and of course the season got all sorts of messed up with a little ninety plus degree heat wave, so today was the last day of strawberry picking, after only opening last weekend. This is so atypical.
We arrived at the field right after opening only to discover that it was packed with other berry seekers. Something that I and the ladies that run the stand giggle about every year is that most people park their cars where the employees tell them not to, and they all bunch together on the edge of the field like a flock of berry-struck lemmings, picking berries off of the top of the plants. These poor people never wander the 5 or more acres of field, and never think to lift up the leaves of the berry plants on the edges to see what's lurking underneath. Not that I am complaining, I just wander out where the ladies tell me to go after parking where they instruct me too, and in no time flat I have picked a few flats. Pieces of cake.
This year was a bit more challenging than usual however. The berries were half the size of normal due to the cold temps during the fruit's developmental stage, and thanks to the heat they were just on the south side of being almost too ripe, but holy cheese spread on a butter cracker was the sugar content magnificent!
I might have also made the mistake of telling son of @generikat the tale of how the very first year that I lived in North Idaho we took his cousin to a field clear down on the Coeur d'Alene Native American Reservation to pick strawberries. There were tons of berries that had rotted on the straw mulch, and a rotten berry fight ensued. Thanks to that remembrance slip up I now have strawberry stains all over my clothing, but son of GK took a strawberry projectile right between the lookers, so I feel vindicated.
Strawberry picking is fun for my family, they each only are required to pick a bucket, which is about five pounds. They sit around and eat strawberries while they leisurely pluck them. I am the genetically flawed one, for I never, ever eat a berry while I am picking them, of any kind. Not only that, with my small stature and hands I can pick two buckets in the time it takes them to almost fill one. I suppose I have created a berry bucket filling subsidy sort of scenario as they all know I will come along after I pick my ten pounds and finish filling their buckets too. Dang it!
After we get the flats home, I usually wash, hull and freeze the strawberries on a single layer on a wax paper lined cookie sheet. I then place the individually frozen berries into a labeled zip top bag and plop it back into the chest freezer for later use. There is nothing better than being able to reach into a large zip top bag and grab out the exact amount of strawberries you need. It took me a couple of years of carving my own versions of the Venus d'Strawberrio to figure that bit of wisdom out, but hey, everyone has to resolve their own grab bag of adulting tasks at their own rate, right?
As I type this, my last tray of individually frozen berries is quick freezing in one of my chest freezers. I usually let each tray of berries freeze for around two hours before I bag them and switch them out with the others. Today, while I waited for each batch to freeze I weeded my garden, which was, before I left on vacation tidy, but as of yesterday looked like my own weed version of Fangorn Forest.
In reality, all of the strawberry work today was worth it, for it was only a few hours of work for a taste of summer whenever we feel like grabbing a handful out of the freezer. Next on the U-pick schedule will be raspberries later in July. I grow those too, but still don't have enough to fill the Polynesian consumption need, so I would much rather support local farm families with my business until I become totally fruit self-sufficient. At the rate my two kids are growing, I sort of feel like that will occur sometime in the next decade. If I am lucky.
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