Up to my ears in Strawberries!

After joining the Live Earth Farm CSA, I discovered that they offer "Community Days" several times through the season. During the community days, they offer tours of the farm, hedgerow plantings and U-pick opportunities. For the U-Pick, they might offer Strawberry, Raspberry, Apricots, Apples, Watermelon, Pumpkins and more. They even let visitors come down on Friday nights and camp out on the farm!

On Saturday morning, Brittany, Keira, Grandma Dub and I headed off to the farm. We gathered our baskets, gloves and hats and hiked down to the strawberry fields. We were warned that the walk to the fields would take about 30 minutes, however I had no idea that it was all downhill. (Not a problem going down, but returning with a couple full flats of berries was a different story!)

I have never seen such beautiful strawberries.... perfectly ripe for the picking! Many of the children in the field sat happily picking and eating berry after berry! They all wore the tell tale red stained mouth, cheeks and fingers giving them away!
Keira thoroughly enjoyed picking them, but rather than eat them, she was excited to fill our baskets.... as did the rest of us!


After we quickly filled the first flat, we decided to get another.... after all, $15 for a full flat of organic strawberries is unheard of around here! We had visions of jams, ice cream, margaritas, and smoothies in our heads! After filling the second flat, we headed off to the staging area for the tractor ride to the top of the hill. We quickly decided that the wait was longer and the exercise would be welcome! (We had quite a few strawberries to work off!) The hike back was a little tougher, but we still ended up reaching the top before the first load of tractor passengers and we were on a time schedule; Brittany had to be at work soon.

Once we got back to Grandma Dub's house and saw Brittany off to work, we started the task of washing, hulling and mashing strawberries. During this time, I also made my batch of bread for the week. This was by far the best batch yet! Warm weather and fresh yeast! What a glorious combination!
We ended up making 3 different kinds of freezer Jam. Option 1. Low Sugar, Option 2. Liquid Pecton with Lemon, Option 3. Liquid Pecton with lemon with 10 minute resting period. Option 4. Cooked Jam (shown below).

We also ended up with 3 gallon sized freezer bags full of frozen strawberries, perfect for smoothies and Margaritas. After several hours, 24 - 8 ounce bottles/containers of jam we were still left with 4 or 5 baskets of strawberries. We hulled and sliced a couple baskets to use for strawberry shortcake and ice cream, but those would have to wait till tomorrow. Mom and I could hardly stand to be on our feet any longer, Keira was starving, and she and I needed to get home.

It was a great day! Next time around, I hope to have a few more sisters around to help with the post picking process, but Mom and I survived... and we had a great time together!