Strawberry picking

[This post has been backdated to keep things chronological. :)]

We went strawberry picking for the first time today! I've been dying to pick berries this summer and have been eagerly checking the farm websites to see when Hood strawberries (my favorite!) would be ready for picking. Hood strawberries, in case you are unfamiliar, are the reddest, juciest, sweetest, most amazingly flavorful strawberries I have ever eaten ... and they are only available for 2-3 weeks during the summer before they are gone! They also need to be used right away because they have a tendency to go bad quickly. Well, when we found out that a local no spray farm (~15 minutes from our house) had ripe strawberries ... you better believe we made plans to go! We got there around 10:30 thinking we'd be the early ones, but apparently they had a LOT of people there right when they opened and warned us that the plants might be bare. Luckily, they were not and we managed to pick a lot of delicious berries!Matt and Jessica came with us - it was great to be out in the sun (finally!) in the morning with our best friends. Aspen was such a good helper! And by helper, I mean she ate the strawberries as fast as we could pick them! When we left, she was sticky and covered in red juices - that's just fine by me! I love watching her enjoy the summer fruits, especially when we're picking them fresh!Brandon and I manged to pick almost 7lbs of strawberries! Woah! The best part is that they are only $1.50/lb at this particular farm, so we only spent around $10 on all that goodness! Smith Berry Barn, you are my new favorite place!When we got home, we had to start deciding what to do with all those fresh strawberries. I knew I had until Monday or so to use them/freeze them before they would be getting bad (if we even had that long), so we got started right away.

Besides eating as many strawberries as we could handle, our 6.83lbs of Hood strawberries turned into some very delectable treats - Strawberry freezer jam, which Aspen loved.
Strawberry lemonade.
A strawberry fruit pie
And strawberry popsicles
The best part? I still had some left over to freeze for smoothies/use later in the year. My goal for the summer is to collect as much summer fruit as possible so that I'm not stuck eating apples and bananas all winter like I was this past year. Although I love apples and bananas as much as the next girl, they certainly get old when you eat them for months on end.