Strawberry Picking

Well we have had quite a week with Madgie and Patch visiting! On Tuesday everyone was pretty tired from all the fourth of July festivities, so we had a low key day. We did go to a children's concert in the park, which was perfect for our kids' ages, however, they were just a little too tired to really get into it and just watched most of the time. We had a nice picnic, but came home early to get to nap.

On Wednesday, we decided to venture out to a strawberry farm a friend recommended to me. It was at the very end of strawberry picking season, so the fields were pretty picked over, but we were able to still pick a ton and have fun doing it. Madgie shows Juliette what we are looking for...

Ben and Abbey took off with Patch and got really into finding the best strawberries and filling their baskets. Juliette stuck close to Madgie and helped her for a while.

Ben was an expert strawberry finder and quickly filled his basket.

Abbey did a great job too!

Juliette finally got into it on her own without Madgie's help, but her basket never got full...she just picked and ate! The only thing she put in her basket were half eaten strawberries! Needless to say, she was a mess by the time we were done, but she was quite happy too!

This was a great activity with the kids. It was nice because the plants were on the ground so they could pick what they wanted (as opposed to when we go apple picking and they need help to get the high ones). We may have to make this a new yearly tradition, but probably try to go a bit earlier in the season.

The farm also had sugar snap peas, so we picked a bunch of those too. Here is our final inventory! The kids actually really liked the sugar snap peas and have been eating them raw and the strawberries were a big hit too. Unfortunately, the strawberries started to go bad quickly, so Madgie washed and cut them all (not an easy task, so thanks for doing it Madgie) and we made strawberry jam after about two days. It turned out pretty good, but didn't gell quite as much as we wanted. Next time we will add pectin, but seeing as how this was a last minute idea to not waste the strawberries, we didn't have that on hand to add. Oh well, it is still good even if it did end up a bit soupy!