Strawberry Time!

Daniel's preschool had a field trip to go strawberry picking Monday. We decided to go as a family. We drove out to Faison to Cottle Farms.

There's a huge "strawberry" out front to let you know you found the right place. It screams "photo op!!" Here's Daniel in front of the gigantic strawberry.

Everyone took a tractor ride out to the strawberry fields. Here are Daniel and Raelee with their cousin while on the tractor ride. Our niece is in the same class as Daniel. Their teacher comments about how they'll look after each other during the day, but they really don't play together. They have their own friends, their own favorite toys, but they do things to help each other out, and you can tell they're related.

Somehow, Joshua got stuck between another family on the tractor ride. I saw him Waaayyy over there and said, "What are you doing over there?" He had no real answer other than, "I got stuck."

After moving from Texas, I thought I'd never see a tank again. Was I wrong! This farmer must be from Texas. He surprised us by stopping the tractor along his tank and proceeded to feed his catfish. These suckers were HUGE! There were 3 of them, and you could tell they were really enjoying the food. Long after he stopped feeding them, they kept coming to the surface hunting for food, poking their mouths out of the water. Out of the 3 pics I took, this was the best where you can see the catfish.

The tractor stopped towards the back of the farm, and this is what we saw: acres and acres of strawberry plants!

Daniel carrying his quart of strawberries. He wanted all the small ones but was very smart about picking only the ripest. There were a couple muddy areas from the irrigation system, and he got his flip-flops stuck a couple times. But he really had a fun time picking strawberries & eating some, too.

Daniel was in charge of taking care of Farley, the class's mascot, over the weekend. Since Monday was a field trip, there wasn't any classes, so we got to keep him an extra day. Even Farley picked a couple strawberries. :)

Here's Raelee showing off her quart of strawberries. Before today, she refused, REFUSED to eat strawberries. Now she loves them almost as much as she loves broccoli (and thankfully I didn't have to take her "broccoli picking" for her to start loving those, she just followed in her brother's footsteps; broccoli is Daniel's favorite vegetable).

Now why can't my strawberries look like this? Ours were super scrawny and they ended up dying off after I picked the first two. Luckily, we have new strawberry blossoms and should have a second chance at getting good berries.

Here's the bevvy of berries we got. Quite a lot! My mother-in-law took a bucket, my sister-in-law took two buckets, and we got a bucket and 3 quarts.

First night home, we made a double batch of strawberry freezer jam. Since then, we've made strawberry shortcakes, and we've had strawberries in our cereal and for snack. And we still have a huge supply in the frig! We want to make some more freezer jam, and I am going to try my hand at Strawberry Muffins.