Strawberry Picking

Elsa and I went down to Loganville, Georgia, on Monday morning to pick strawberries at one of Washington Farm's locations. If you are interested in getting out to pick, I highly recommend going this week -- the berries are huge, beautiful, red, and plentiful! And they taste fabulous.

We (I) picked three heaping, gallon-sized buckets of berries, and when I got home I weighed them and came up with about thirteen-and-a-half pounds. I froze three pounds whole so I can later make traditional strawberry preserves, and six pounds diced for strawberry jam. The last bucket is just sitting in the fridge for our enjoyment, and I hope to attempt stawberry shortcake tonight, using Bisquick's gluten free mix.

Elsa had fun carrying one of the buckets around until it got too full and heavy. She had a little trouble picking strawberries off the plants themselves, but I would pick some and hand them to her so she could drop them into the bucket. Her favorite part of the whole adventure, though? The little pink flags that were set up at the end of each strawberry row. You were to take a flag with you as you picked, and then place it where you stopped so others would know how far you picked down a row. Elsa carried and waved our flag the entire time, and was so tempted to go and get other flags to give to me and others around her (she actually did have three flags in her hand at one point, and I had to figure out where to re-place them). She even wanted to take one home that she found laying on the ground on the walk back to the car, but with the long wire "flag pole," I was quite wary of letting that happen, so I told her we would make a purple flag of her very own when we got home. I followed up on my word, and she now has a little purple flag made out of purple fleece and a chopstick. She does enjoy waving it on a daily basis, but it does not seem nearly as exciting as the pink variety at the farm.