Strawberries!!

I’ve been waiting for U-Pick strawberries all spring.  I have been patiently waiting for the sign to go up that tells me that the farm is open and strawberries are in season.  When Jason got home from work today, he said that he saw a sign on his way home for a U-Pick strawberry place.  It’s not the place I had in mind, but after dinner, the older boys and I went there to check it out.  They were open until 7, so that gave us about an hour.

We picked 7 quarts!  They were only $1.10 per pound so I ended up paying $8.45 for them.  After we were done, we went and borrowed my mom’s canner and went and bought some jars, pectin, and sugar.  I got 8 pints of strawberry jam and still had almost a quart left over for the kids to eat.  They pretty much finished the whole thing.

I’m so excited.  It’s so hard to find jam at the store that doesn’t have HFCS in it and the stuff that doesn’t is freaking expensive.  It will be nice to have the homemade stuff for a while.  Plus, blueberry, raspberry, and peach season is still coming up so there will be plenty!

It was my first time canning and I’m happy to report that all of the jars sealed properly.  We’ll just see how well the jam sets up.  It has to sit for 24 hour first.

Canning was super easy though.  Since it was a highly acidic fruit, I was able to do it without the use of a pressure canner.  I’ll have to borrow that when it comes time for green beans and stuff like that.

I might even go back in the morning and get more.  I wanted to keep some to freeze for things like smoothies and strawberry shortcake.  The farmer told me that if it rains tonight and tomorrow, their season is done for and if not, they’ll be open until Saturday.  I forgot to ask, but I have a feeling these strawberries were organic too.  There were lots of weed and lots of bugs around the plants and some of the berries had obviously been chewed on by some sort of critter.  They sell the berries at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market too and it seems that most of the vendors there are either certified organic or they advertise that they don’t spray.  So I’ll ask if and when I go back tomorrow.

The boys had a blast picking them and it was great to get them out there to see the work involved in harvesting and to be able to talk about why getting berries from a local farm is so much better then buying them from some farm in California.