Ok, so here’s a funny little story. Oh first of all I should probably say that I will announce the WINNAH of the recipes and advice given tomorrow. The lucky winnAH will receive a $20 gift voucher! So stay tuned!
Ok, so back to da FROOT picking. We have done this in the past and I always ask the same question. WHY DO WE DO IT… then I forget and the whole cycle starts all over again…
Ryan “wanna go strawberry picking?”
Emily “why?”
Ryan “because it is fun.. and a way to kill 2 hours”
Emily “fine. K. we’ll go.”
And then I realize that it is SMOLDERING hot outside and I am MISERABLE.
So we go in the car and off we go to the farm to pick strawberries and sweet peas.. then after that activity we go for ice cream and buy fresh fruits and vegetables.. OK.. let me get to the crux of the event
We park the car.. proceed to BUY 2 big white buckets to collect the strawberries in… we walk approximately 2 km (=90 miles in my head) to the strawberry vines (are they called vines)? my Tyler and Jayden are slipping in mushy strawberries as are Ryan and I… we follow these people wearing strawberry shirts who advise us which “lane” to go pick from. So off we go… stooping and pulling and sliding and picking these strawberries.. my children have RED mushy faces from eating.. I am sweating but starting to LOVE the challenge of finding the biggest strawberry. Ryan and I proceed to enter a SILENT strawberry picking contest… where we proceed to pluck strawberries and raise them to the sky to show EVERYONE WHO THE CHAMPION STRAWBERRY PICKER IS… our children at this point are a little bit unsupervised.. ahem… and are filling the buckets with what they DEEM good strawberries but we don’t notice cuz Ryan and I are bizzy becoming champions. Once we fill the buckets to the point where it is difficult/impossible to carry them to the BOOF where we pay for them… $20 later.. we are pooped, and I start my questions again as to WHY WE PICK OUR OWN FRUITS when it costs $0.99 to BUY it in an air conditioned market…
Ryan says it is the EXPERIENCEEEEE
P.S. the strawberries were mushy and soft by the time we got home so they were thrown out.. but it was the EXPERIENCE..
P.P.S. I won the ALL STAR STRAWBERRY PICKING CHAMPIONSHIP
mwah to da sistahs who enjoy picking their own FROOTS
Em
OMG, you so made me LOL with the strawberry picking because we had the IDENTICAL experience last weekend. Except I made jam and strawberry pie with my mushy rotten berries because I am a better person than you :D. I will bring the jam to Tremblant and we will casually spread it on our party sandwiches.
I shmuv smoo 🙂 🙂 :).
HILARIOUS! I do enjoy picking my own fruits…from the fresh fruit display at the local farm stand where the picking has already been done! But at least yo have the experience to savor 🙂
This is dah best story evah!! Love it…you go you CHAMPION STRAWBERRY PICKER YOU!!!!!!
ohhhhhhhhh see now that sounds like fun!!!
i want 2 take the girls and do that this week
hope you are all well and i hope 2 see you soon
hugssssssssssssss 2 all of u
HAHAHA I can so see this in my head ;). Congrats to the best strawberry picker evah!!!
hehehe!!! TOO CUTE!!! Great story. I can only imagine what would happen getting my gang out there:) lol!!! Thanks for sharing:)!
Too funny!!! I go to the market and pick my own fruit from the huge amount and varieties of fruit!!! I also get to socialize, seems like everyone is doing the same thing these days!! LOL!!
Where I use to live….we picked all our strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, apples, and rhrubarb. Then I would go home and wash them all down, package what I am not using and make pies from scratch! What a job it was!!! I am so glad that I live 75 miles away from that former location!! I still bake my pies but get my fruits from either the farmer’s market or supermarket!! Woo Hoo! Praise the fruits of the land!!
Thanks for reading!!
Gaylabella
You make-ah me laughhhhhh! I am singing “We are the champions” in my head….thanks for the funny image. LOL
But of course we all new who would be the Champion Picker in your Fam!! mwah!
Your story is the exact reason why I stopped taking the kids berry picking years ago. If I run out of homemade jam (yes I do make jam) then I will go and buy them ready-picked.
Thanks for sharing the great story though!! I hope that lunch making it getting a wee bit easier.
LOL that is too funny! Its been years since ive been to a u-pick but the last time i went was with my grandparents about 5 years ago. We buy our stawberries in teh bigpacks at costco and made a ton of freezer jam, which will prolly last till next spring (hopefully) oh and we love to make fresh strawberry pie , mom’s is to die for seriously i only like real strwberry stuff, i dont even like store bought strawberry jam lol. but it sounds like you had fun and your children with have these memories for years to come (ÿa back in 2008 mom and dad draged us to this farm and made us pick fruit, didnt they realize we can get it at IGA? lol just imagining what your kids would think in 10 years or so X)
Sorry it was all for nothing.
We really enjoy berry picking, but you have to go bright and early before it gets too hot. Hoep you took pics of the kids covered in strawberries.
Oh dear Em. You probably had lots of sticky laundry to do that day. I agree with everyone else – just go to a farmers market & pick your fruits & veggies up off the counters. If you go early enough, some of this stuff still has the dirt on it. Not quite the same experience, but just as tasty. However, the only problem with this plan is the word “early”.
YESSSSS!!!! I can do the “Please add 1 and 1” without using my fingers 😉
When my kids were little I would take them every year to pick strawberries. It was always the me & the kids since my husband was usually out of town on business. It was so much fun & at least I have so many great memories of the times in the strawberry patch. I’d have them weigh my kids before & after picking so that I could pay for those berries as well as the ones in our baskets! 😉
You will one day be so happy that you have that experience to look back on; and…I might add…that day will be here before you know it!! I am so wishing for those hot sticky days once again….
I don’t know about strawberry picking, but you are the champion story teller, Em!
This is what I will start telling my husband when he asks, “why do you need more stamps?” I will say, “I need the experience of stamping with this new Bella or fairy or whatever it is.” Life is all about experiences! 🙂
Believe it or not, I have been strawberry picking! I really don’t eat them but I was forced to pick them….I like the smell of them but, I did not like picking them!
LOL! My first experience berry picking was similar and I remember thinking, ok, 3 hours, aching back more berries in the tummy than in the container (oops! :D) – was it worth it? Yeah, ’cause now we can talk about it with everyone else!
Oh my gosh what a hilarious story! You crack me up!
I loveeee to picky my own fruits…Oh, I mean frooots.!!! You crack me up.!
GET OUDDA HERE!!! we did that yesterday!! only it was just the kids and I. HOT? omg! gross… We came home and DOVE into the pah-oooooL! ahhh….
not to mention I under cooked our peas (grrr!) and had to hull all the berries myself. today, made 11 jars of jam – and STILL have enough berries for like 11 more jars (only we need to get more jars!)
Doesn’t it always seem like the bigger berries are also in the NEXT lane??
hey!! should we be looking for a FROOTY bellA? 😉
JenHoover has a great idea…..FROOTABELLA….how great would that be? We could also have a strawberry stamp to go with her…an apple stamp for the fall…watermelon stamp for the summah…
Whadda ya think, Em?
I was laughing my heart out….worst than your strawberries is my homemade bread, that I insist on making, spend hours working on the dough and end up giving to the ducks on the little park around my place…and sometimes even the ducks don’t want my homemade bread…
Oh my goodness. That is too funny. I’m with Ryan, it’s the experience is what makes it worth it. You didn’t by chance take a camera?
I read this story last week and enjoyed the thought of the experience and laughed at the race part and closed the blog with a wonderful smile on my face. Than I went over to my daughters piano teachers house this weekend. The teacher has decided that she would trade my daughters lessons for 3 hours of slave labor in her yard each week. It helped us out of a tight spot last year and has just stuck around since then. She also recently had surgery on her foot and so she was unable to do a lot of walking. She sent my daughter and I out to pick the cherries off of her tree. So we picked our own frootsss. I think we ended up smashing more on the ground than we got in the bucket, and when we tried to take the net off the tree we sent a few cherry bombs flying across the yard, but we had a good time. Than we came in all scratched up and scarred from the tree branches, turned in our stash and she insisted that we stay to make jelly. So we did. We came home with a wonderful jar of jelly that we saw through almost from the beginning. I know that my daughter will always remember this. Yea to the picking, boiling, mashing, sugaring, ladeling, waxing, canning, and eating of the Frootssss!;o)