Strawberry Picking

Monday was Memorial day and we decided to go strawberry picking.  If you live outside the state of Oregon there is a chance you have never had the pleasure of eating an Oregon Strawberry.  Most of the time the strawberry that you find in the store are California strawberries (even in Oregon).  Oregon Strawberry are smaller and have a more intense flavor then their cousins to the south, but they also have a much shorter shelf life.  They are best when picked fresh from the fields so that is just what we did.

We have picked other berries before, but this was our first time for strawberries.  The berries were plentiful and easy to pick.  We were all picking along when Merrick decided he needed to go potty.  Unfortunately that meant a port-a-potty and then the discovery of hand sanitizer instead of a place to wash and I officially deemed him done picking.

Merrick was not happy about being benched and so our picking window quickly came to a close.  Maybe that was a blessing in disguise because we somehow still ended up with 13 lbs of strawberries (I love the picture of the haul with Carrigan's swiper hand for scale).

A large chunk of the rest of the day was spent processing the berries.  Everything was washed and de-stemmed and then we got to work making freezer jam.  I have to give a big shout out to Jeremy here.  I expected him to hand this part off to me, but he was a huge help in getting the jam made.  After we ran out of jars and pectin, we got the rest ready to freeze (expect the ones we saved out to gorge ourselves on with whipped cream later that night).

I look forward to a lot more picking in the summer months ahead.  Oregon in the summer is seriously the best.