It's that time of year again, Strawberry Picking time. When hoards of people, including us, go to the Fruit Picking Farms. We decided to go to the same one we went to last year, armed with our Farm bucket (purchased for $4 last year) and a couple of extra containers. We picked only $7 dollars worth before and this year we were ready to pick a mighty crop.
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| Two more licence plates in the strawberry car park |
It was, once again, very busy, with every nation (Huffle edit - in fact we didn't spot or hear any white Canadians) trying to park their huge trucks, queuing to get their buckets weighed (and some of the children ha, they should have, the amount I saw eating rogue strawberries - not including my own brood!). We were assigned two rows between the four of us. Huffle and Smallest took one row and Small and I took another. We had some Eastern Europeans climbing over to our row and getting in Small's way, sticking their bum in his face. I had to have a few choice words. It's a very territorial thing, picking strawberries. When we had exhausted our two, Huffle started to wander onto another row and he was shouted at by MissRowAssigner who said if he needed a new row, he should say! We were assigned two new rows and the woman next to me asked if I was on the same row as her as I was obviously picking her strawberries. I explained how the system worked and she was happy (ish). Everyone in our family ate a good amount except for Small who has decided this year that he doesn't eat strawberries by themselves, only with other things. Our bucket and another container was filled, we were very warm, it was getting very busy and we decided to stop. No Raspberries yet, that may be next week. We could have picked beans but we are hoping for our own crop this year.
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| Strawberry Fields Forever |
Earlier this morning we bought extra sugar, pectin, whipping cream and flour so we could make our usual strawberry feast, so all we needed to do was to pay for our pickings and go home. We spent $23 this time.
After lunch at home we sterilised our jam jars. Small sat with his foot soaking (it was sore again) and cut the strawberries that Smallest washed. Huffle stirred the mixture and we kept adding to it. We actually used 20 cups of strawberries and had to sterilise some more jars to accommodate it all. Part way through reading the recipe, we realised you shouldn't double up your quantities as it may not work. WHOOPS - we not only doubled but we multiplied it by ten! It didn't ripple on the plate like it should have but we persevered and eventually canned our lovely scrumptious mixture (so much sugar!!!!!!). We ended up with 17 jars of Strawberry Jam, some just 250g jars but others bigger. I think we may have overestimated this time. Hope it works though because that's an awful lot of strawberries and jam we may have wasted. The original recipe can be found here (if this one works I will publish that one too at a later date).
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| We jammin' |
I made Strawberry Muffins and Huffle made Plain Scones and we sampled a scone with our cup of tea. Huffle and I had been cooking, jamming and baking for two and a half hours but it was worth it. The scone was still warm from the oven, with still warm strawberry jam, freshly whipped (by Smallest) cream. Ummm ummmmm. Fabulous. Huffle does make an exceedingly good scone.
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| What do you think of these Paul Hollywood? |
| All tuckered out, jams stored for the Winter, we went out for dinner. Tonight we went to a local pub style place and I had a lovely Grilled Salmon Salad with a Mango Salsa - very good. |
| We won a 'cologne' at the Strawberry Festival last weekend and Huffle picked it up today - it was minuscule |
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| We won a 'cologne' at the Strawberry Festival last weekend and Huffle picked it up today - it was minuscule |
*On the way home we saw a Bird of Prey which was being harassed by a few smaller birds. We didn't know what they were doing so we looked it up. Apparently, the smaller birds are trying to get the bigger birds to move out of their territory by pecking at them. The bigger birds are less likely to attack the smaller ones as they are not as agile, but occasionally they turn on them. Just like the people trying to get in Small's way in the strawberry fields.
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