Strawberry Pickin'

We chose the middle of a heat wave weekend to go strawberry picking this year. The good news is that it was also a peak weekend so the berries were ripe and incredibly sweet and juicy. There is seriously NOTHING like eating a warm strawberry right from the plant. The bad part though, is that we ended up picking about 8 pounds of strawberries in our excitement, and we are now paying for that. Since Saturday, we have eaten strawberry trifles, strawberries with Cool Whip, strawberries over pancakes, and strawberries with yogurt. We have strawberries coming out of our ears, and our fingers are permanently stained red now. If anyone knows any good strawberry recipes, please let me know soon!

This year, Emma really got into the picking. She was out in the sun with me for the entire time, picking and picking. Alexa, on the other hand, ate her weight in strawberries. Instead of "Blueberries for Sal," the book should be called "Strawberries for Alexa." Arturo has about 20 pictures of Alexa eating various strawberries throughout the day - we won't bore you with all of them.

On a mildly related note of Alexa and eating, I am in my 2nd week now of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I am loving it, Arturo is eh. But of note worthiness is that last week we got something in our bag called "Garlic Scapes" or Garlic Curls. We tried grilling them on Sunday. They are decent that way, but Alexa actually really liked them! And good thing, because apparently, I'm picking up more tomorrow :).

That is Alexa "milking" the cow, underneath Emma:

At Great Country Farms, they also have a bunch of other activities after you are done with the berry picking. The girls spent a lot of time in the "Corn Bin" - basically a huge sandbox that is filled with hard corn kernels instead of sand. It feels strangely therapeutic stepping into the bin o' corn.

Emma is making a "Corn Angel" here:

Riding the pedal Tractors: