This photo of Mom and me is from June 1989, right after Phil and I had graduated from college and moved back home.
One summer we decided we wanted to go strawberry picking, so we found out about Patterson Fruit Farm. Oh my, what a great time we had there. Out in the early morning sun, squatting down in among the rows of strawberry plants and finding the best ones to throw in our baskets.
The problem was that we didn’t really know anything about how to handle our strawberries once we got them home. So, we washed them all, put them back in the cardboard trays we brought them home in and then sat them aside. We happily skipped away with visions of yummy treats to come.
Then disaster struck. Any strawberry-picking veteran knows that you only give the berries a quick rinse in cool water and a swift pat with a paper towel to dry them off when, and only when, you’re ready to eat or cook with them. But we were no strawberry-picking veterans. I’m not going to sugarcoat this: we lost a lot of good berries that day. A lot of good berries.
Fortunately, we did not give up on our strawberry dreams. The next year we went picking with a plan. We looked up a freezer jam recipe and bought the ingredients before ever heading to the farm. It was that year that our berry-picking tradition was really born. The picking was fun, the cleaning happened as soon as we got home with the berries and then the jam turned out to be ridiculously easy and tasty!
In the June 1989 photo on this layout, Phil and Mom and I had gone out for our yearly strawberry excursion, and Mom and I were on the swing in our back yard cleaning the fruits of our labor. It was a really good summer day, and we had delicious strawberry jam for months. Mmmm…
Product/technique notes:
I used Creative Scrappers sketch #107 for inspiration and Jillibean Soup patterned papers (Coconut Lime and Macho Nacho lines) to pull this layout together.
Wonderful story and layout. Did you manage to get many this year? We have a yearly tradition to go picking with my Dad who knows the family who work at the farm we go to. The crop was AWFUL this year and my Dad’s friend who is nearly 80 and worked there all his life, said he’s never seen it so bad.
Thanks, Lisa-Jane! Sadly we didn’t go strawberry picking this spring because we didn’t know of a good local farm that offers it. But, I have since learned that the pumpkin patch we went to in nearby Marble Falls also has fabulous strawberry fields. So, we’ll definitely be going next May! Did your dad’s friend know why the crop was so bad?