berry picking

after reading "animal, vegetable, miracle," i was inspired to do some form of canning with locally grown fruit. so, i did some investigation and found a u-pick farm down in payson (phelp's farm, if you're curious) that has raspberries and blackberries right now, made an appointment, and dragged along two of my friends who are already experts at canning/jamming.

the farm was beautiful, although i think that if i could do it over again, i would wait until a little later in the season when it is cooler. fortunately, we did all of our picking by 11:45, so it wasn't too hot by the time we left, but you know how i am about heat.

here is robynn, picking.

megan and madeleine.

megan, don't kill me for posting this. this is megan modeling the suggested way to wear your berry picking accouterments: two milk jugs with the tops cut off, with a belt threaded through the handles. keeps both hands free for picking and really is the most efficient way to do it. robynn and i are both pregnant and were not willing to put on belts, but megan sported the style well.

beautiful berries

madeleine was happy for about the first 20 minutes, just walking around and eating berries off the bush.

or out of my jug.

however. as soon as the novelty of picking berries wore off and she got full, she went into melt-down mode. she has been extremely clingy this week and has been insisting that i hold her hand or hold her almost all of the time. she decided that our picking time was no exception. poor megan and robynn ended up picking lots of my berries for me as i tried to entertain my clingy toddler.

a momentary reprieve from holding madeleine while she played on her stroller. this lasted approximately two minutes. i wasted 15 seconds of it by taking the picture.

this is madeleine, showing us her messy hand from eating the blackberries, which were much more messy than the raspberries had been. my daughter does not like things on her hands.

closer up. all in all, she actually didn't get that messy. i had actually intentionally put her in white so that i could just let her get as messy as she wanted and then oxy-clean the onesie later. it was nice not to worry about that while dealing with everything else.

this is madeleine at the end of the picking session. i did not put her in the carseat. she went over to the car, insisted that i open the door, and climbed into the seat herself. she had checked out. she was done for the day.

home and washed. aren't they beautiful?

i spent this afternoon making jam with my berries. i decided to go for freezer jam to keep it simple (and cheaper) on my first attempt, but i am very excited to see the results tomorrow, once it sets up. i made one batch of raspberry jam and one batch of raspberry/blackberry jam. i also made sure to pick some extras for us to eat, so we have been enjoying those. they are really sweet and delicious berries. perhaps this will have to become a tradition!