Picking Strawberries

A few weeks back, the family headed out of the city for a morning of berry picking. It was a beautiful day and the fields provided lots of fruit to pick!

Wagon ride out to the fields:
Cora enjoyed the day on mom's back, with only a few protests...I think those were related to wanting to eat the strawberries and not being able to reach them! Notice that Larson's not shy about trying a sample:

Larson showing how it's done. Like the hat? Scroll to the next photo to see where it came from!

Larson & Kaleo hanging out in the berry patch:

The berries were huge and beautiful, but not the most flavorful locally-grown berries I've tasted. They were certainly good enough to make a big batch of jam and these beauties:

This was my first foray into jam-making. All I have to say is: thank goodness for locally-owned "hardware" stores that are still in business after all of these years, because otherwise I would have had to order my jar-grabbers and funnel (these are the two implements I decided were actually worth purchasing) online. Seeing as my freshly-picked flat of strawberries probably didn't want to sit out for 3-5 days while I waited for something to arrive in the mail, I was grateful. The jam turned out great and wasn't hard to make at all, although I think next time I will look into using the low-sugar pectin. The regular kind has you using a whopping 7c of sugar for 4c of crushed berries - yikes! Not surprisingly, the jam was a big hit with the boys...