Every year we all look forward to that special day when the strawberry farms put their faded signs out front with the big red letters "U-Pick". If you blink you'll miss it...strawberry picking season is usually less than two months...maybe just May and a couple weeks of June. But this year...THIS year...after a warm spell in January those signs showed up in April. My heart skipped a beat. Unless you've been there it's hard to explain the smell of the sweet breeze in a strawberry field, the prickly leaves, the hunt for the perfect big, red, ripe, strawberry. We all have our theories...I think the biggest deepest red ones are the sweetest, others in our clan go for the small ugliest of the bunch claiming pretty doesn't always equal sweet. Last year, I kid you not, finding that we hadn't had a free weekend the whole of pickin' season I dragged my reluctant husband out to the fields in the rain on the last day. Mud was up to our ankles, the rain spitting at us, the wind whipping, and it was cold. Oh yeah, did I forget to mention I also had my infant son in his stroller with me? Don't worry, he had a blanket and didn't melt. Must. Have. Strawberries. But really the obsession is not the berries so much as the JAM. Homemade, sinfully sweet, easy as pie strawberry jam. We load up our buckets, baskets, and cardboard boxes just so we can take them home, pulverize them, and put them in a jar. This year was no different with one exception. Jake was big enough to not only go along but he got to pick them too. So on Friday afternoon we loaded up and headed out to Bellamy Farms. I searched for the biggest reddest, my mother-in-law had her bucket of all different sizes and shades of red, and my sweet baby boy? He picked whatever caught his fancy. Big red ones that he tugged off the vine landing with an "oomph" on his bottom. Small green ones that broke off easily with a"pop" and a squeal of delight. Some even two tone almost ripe with shades of yellow and red...I'm sure he thought those were the best because he picked lots of them. It goes without saying but this year's pickin' was my favorite. The jam is fantastic and the berries of all colors are waiting in my freezer. Sharing this tradition with my little one? How sweet it is.
