Ahhh - Strawberry Season

Another year, another race to see how quickly we can pick strawberries.

Just a bit over 30lbs. in under 15 minutes.

The older girls all complained that we should have been done in 10min.

We did have one less than enthusiastic picker. One of the other girls and I helped finish her bucket.

Then came all the work of washing, sorting, and capping.

The absolutely perfect ones will be frozen.

Others made it into jam.

And who could spend all day around strawberries and not eat a bunch.

The decision to go strawberry picking today was kind of a last minute thing. Normally I would make a pound cake the day before, but we weren't going to let that stop us from having one of our favorite desserts. I just stopped at the store on the way home to pick up an angel food cake and a can of Redi-Whip.

Of course there were lots of dire warnings given in the car (and on the way to the car), just to make sure that most of the berries made it home, but that always happens. The whole, "But it hasn't been washed yet." never fazes them. I have to put and older kid (who happens to be sitting too far from temptation to join in) on lookout. Then the table has to be guarded while we make sure the pans for the freezer get filled and that there's plenty for jam. After all that they are allowed free access to the remaining berries.

We'll have to go picking again. We can only fit so many pans in the freezer at a time, and after all the picking, sorting, capping, cutting, etc., I was only up for two batches of jam (plus, we didn't have anymore pectin). We only have one box of berries left now anyway (about 6 lbs), and it won't take long for the girls to polish that off. Have I mentioned they love strawberries?