Berry Picking

About two weeks ago, we got a hankering for some strawberries and an adventure. We normally just find a place to buy our strawberries, but we thought introducing the boys to berry picking would be a fun thing to do. I did some searching and found this great place off Farmington. We were only one of three families there, so we had most of the field to ourselves. They only charge $1 per pound and we ended up walking away with just over 8 pounds of strawberries.

I was a little nervous how they kept up with kids eating all the berries (and I knew my kids would stuff their faces), but when we arrived, the lady told us that they encourage the kids to eat all that they want, as they believe that it teaches the children to figure out which berries are ripe enough to pick. Good news for us!
As soon as Nathan figured out that you could pick them off the plant, his little mouth was constantly stuffed. We found some huge berries and were able to get two kinds - Hoods and Puget. Yum!

Don't you love Nathan's messy mouth?

Aiden thought they were quite yummy as well.

I'd never made jam before and was a little nervous, but we had fun with it and should be good on jam for a while. Even with making the jam, we still had multiple strawberry milkshakes, strawberry shortcakes, and were able to put some whole strawberries in the freezer for later desserts.

So that was our first berry patch adventure and we plan to go back to the same farm for blueberries here quite soon!