One of the rewards, at least for me, of living through the blustery winter conditions here is the absolutely fantastic summer and fall that almost entirely make up for it. I love berry picking in the summer and apples in the fall. I was bound and determined to get fresh strawberries and put them to good use this week.
I decided that Wednesday would be the day. I loaded the kids into the car and we headed for the freeway. At a stop sign another car pulled up next to me and told me that I had a flat tire. I pulled off to the side of the road to check, hoping I was just low on air, only to find out that the only thing between the rim and the road was a pathetically flat piece of tire. I called the tire store where we had purchased the tire last year to see if it was still under warranty (thankfully, it was) and they told me I should probably get some air in it so the tire wouldn’t completely fall off the rim. As inconvenient as it seemed to mess with the tire, sitting on the side of the road with a car full of kids seemed A LOT more inconvenient, so I went to the local gas station and filled up the tire with air.
The thought did cross my mind that I could justifiably go home and turn the kids loose in the sprinklers and call it a day, but their constant questioning about if we were still going berry picking made it clear that we were not going home without fresh strawberries. Somewhere during the year Madelyn and Parker had taken to the notion that when we next went berry picking we would be making strawberry shortcake with the goods. They didn’t fail to remind me of this either.
We finally made it to the tire store and they were able to get us right in. I’m pretty sure the scene of the lady followed by a bunch of curious kids around lunchtime helped our plight take priority. We were out of there in 20 minutes flat! It was just enough time to feed the kids the picnic lunch I had prepared for the strawberry excursion and we were on our way.
The rest of the trip was without incident and we had a lovely time in the patch. Each of the kids was given a small bucket for collecting berries and when it got full they were to dump that bucket into the large flat box. Madelyn had a 1:1 ratio of picking and eating.
Parker was our task master and he took great pride in filling his bucket and dumping it in the big box as many times as he could.
Meredith turned out to be our most efficient picker: She didn’t bother with the bushes-- she kept telling me that the strawberries were “too tight,” meaning that they were too hard to get off the vine, so she just picked her strawberries straight from the communal box. As I processed them the next day I probably found 15 berries that had a single Meredith-sized bite in them that she had tossed back in after sampling!
We had a great discussion about teamwork and how much faster the box got filled when we were all contributing, which was probably a more productive method of teaching the concept than the lecture they usually get at home about chores and such!
The following day I made jam, and today we made and ate the much anticipated strawberry shortcake for dessert.
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