1 Mother 2 Another

Yep, it’s that time of year again!
Flowers are blooming, and everything’s coming ripe. What
better way to spend an afternoon than picking strawberries?


This year I had to take Maddie out of school to go: the
farm’s only open Wednesdays and Saturdays, and since I teach
most Saturdays we sacrificed some school. Which, if you know
Maddie, actually was a sacrifice on her part. But at lunch time
yesterday we picked Maddie up and headed off on our adventure.

The first year we moved here and went
picking, Cora wasn’t yet a year old and had never had a
strawberry. By the time we’d left, she’d picked over
two dozen and crammed them in her mouth – I could barely keep
up with her to wash the dirt off before she’d shove another
one into that maw. And as I reminisced about that first time with
Maddie, she couldn’t believe she’d been the age then
that Cora is now. “But Mommy, I remember it so well!”


“Yep, well you were still not quite three when we went the
first time!” Maddie’s learned to not argue with an
adult, but I could see that in her mind I was all kinds of wrong.


This year the weather was beautiful, though the temperature peaked
at 90 degrees. Both girls behaved beautifully, moving up and down
the rows without stepping on any plants, and when I inspected their
pails at the end there was not an under-ripe strawberry in the
bunch. We worked steadily for an hour, walking up and down the rows
and uncovering the berried treasure, neither girl complaining for
an instant.


When all was said and done, we picked nearly fifteen pounds of
strawberries, though by the time we got home our total was closer
to fourteen pounds since the girls began chowing down as soon as
the berries were paid in full. We stopped for frozen yogurt to cool
us off after our hot hard work, and headed happily home.


I know these moments will be fewer and further between as the girls
grow up. I’ll have a harder time justifying Maddie’s
removal from “real” school for something as esoteric as
berry picking, though I think it’s a shame such times
don’t count as field trips or earth science lessons or
something. The girls listen gravely as the farmer explains why
strawberries need sandy soil, and how they’re watered under
their tarps, and what he uses for organic plant food in lieu of
chemicals like MiracleGro. So I treasure these days when I get
them.


We’ve got about fourteen pounds of strawberries to process,
and since they’re the incredibly sweet but relatively small
wild strawberries, that’s a lot of washing and hulling.
We’ll eat some, puree some for yogurt, and turn the rest into
jam. We’ve a couple pounds of blackberries left over in the
freezer from last year, so Cora’s already smacking her lips
at the thought of a wild berry jam. She’s made me promise not
to do any jam-making or canning without her, though why anyone
likes that long hot process is beyond me.


In a week or two we’ll have a few jars of ruby-red jam, which
we’ll probably devour by July or so. The pictures and
memories – those will last a little longer.