Strawberry Picking!!!

Back on June 30th we decided the time was right.

Timing is everything when it comes to fresh strawberry picking.

If you've been picking as long as we have...you'll see the signs.

Wait for the weather to be sunny with a light breeze.

You'll also want to avoid picking around any rainy days.

The rain will add moisture to the berries...which seems like a good thing, right?

NO!

Moisture on your berries will make them mush by the time you get home.

Another important thing to have is a good hat.

The hat should be well ventilated and have a wide brim.

Owen likes to go berry picking in style...

Most years we just bring the good old white Ontario grows baskets.

They usually charge a nominal fee for the baskets.... 50 cents!

We bought about 12 the first year...but the investment was well worth it.

We have lost a few to breakage over the years...but this year we brought 6 baskets.

This year Owen brought a bucket from the movies to fill.

You can bring whatever size of container you want!

When you bring a container (that isn't a white basket) the farmers at Paulridge Berry farm in Napanee will weigh the basket and mark on masking tape how much the container weighs.

That way, when you go to weight your berries...they will deduct the weight of the container.

I just adored the vintage weight scale!!!

We ride out to the patch on the tractor drawn flat bed trailer.

Darling Son and Handsome Husband all ready to go!

I'm all set too!

Look at the beautiful weather we had!!!

Another thing to note...we bring water floaties to sit on.

We each had a flutter board of some description.

They are perfect for kneeling or just sitting in the rows.

They are lightweight and easy to haul in with you.

(plus you can also use them as trays when getting your baskets back to the car!)

The picking was amazing!!!

Everywhere we looked was a small motherload of sweet berry goodness!

We try to stick with the smaller berries...they have concentrated flavour.

I also have a tendency to pick berries that are slightly yellow still.

I do this because we aren't always able to make jam right away.

Some years we have gotten home and the berries were already jam in the trunk of my car!

If you pick the super ripe ones (which everyone will be tempted to do)

you risk them going all moldy before you get to enjoy them.

You can see some slightly yellow ones on top.

We kept them in the car this time, turning on the AC full blast.

Once we were home, they went straight to the cool basement with a dehumidifier.

The dehumidifier keeps the moisture down and keeps the berries fresher longer.

As soon as humanly possible...make jam!

...or eat them in yoghurt, as a cereal or oatmeal topping, sliced on salads,

as a fruit salsa, in tarts or pies, or try this new recipe:

Strawberry Pinwheels

whole grain tortillas

garlic & herb cream cheese

strawberries

ham

romaine lettuce

-spread each tortilla with cream cheese

-arrange sliced strawberries and ham evenly, top each tortilla with lettuce

-roll up, cut each roll crosswise into 4 pieces to make 16 total.

...and don't forget...dipped in chocolate.

Strawberries are awesome!

Year 3!!! Jumping in with both feet

Its been a few years now...

Since we moved into our forever home in the country.

We had lived in our first family home for 4 years and, 

as all of you long term readers know,

we had a pretty well established garden.

We had wild raspberry canes and asparagus flourishing.

We had an ever expanding garden plot.

We had healthy food and fun for the whole family.

Then we moved...

We decided to move into a bigger home and a bigger lot.

As sad as we were to leave, 

it was one of the best decisions we have ever made.

We continue to recover the overgrown lot.

Changing it into something amazing, while maintaining its natural state.

We continue to cultivate our land to maximize our haul, all on less than 2 acres.

The above picture shows the transformation the yard

has taken in the first two years.

This year will produce some of the most drastic changes

since we first took over!

We're adding new beds for berries.

This new addition will provide raspberries,

blueberries, blackberries and gooseberries...

Ches is obsessed with getting a blackberry strain called "Chester".

Not only will these bushes come back and flourish every year

but they will also provide some divide and privacy between our yard 

and the dog run next door.

We are also getting chickens!!!

A family friend is giving us 4 hens approx 1 yr old.

We were able to get our hands on a free shed that

another friend was throwing away!

A few adjustments to the shed will have it ready for the girls

that are arriving in less than a month.

I gotta say...we are pretty frickin excited!!!!

(Another friend of ours says he is going to buy us 4 MORE chickens

so he can get free eggs....)

Stay tuned for the "creating of the coop" post!

(and many subsequent chicken stories)

Our indoor seedlings are getting bigger by the day!

45 Roma tomato plants...

several Broccoli plants...

All growing indoors...because this year we don't have a cat.

What are you most excited about this growing season?

Just about missed the strawberries!

We are so fortunate to have a choice of pick-yer-own farms in our area.

Both are great for different reasons.  Both are run by members of the same family.

We decided to go to Paulridge this year, because of necessity.  My mother in law called ahead to see which farm actually still had strawberries left!  We had waited too long in the season to have the luxury of choice.

So off to Napanee we went back at the beginning of July!

(Ideal timing in our area seems to be the middle to end of june for strawberries...but raspberries are later on)

Paulridge Farms is a family run operation that has been going on for years.

They really do have it down to a fine art.  They provide everything one might need for the experience.

http://www.paulridgeberryfarm.com/

Quaint placards display current pricing, wagons to haul your load to the car.  The parking lot is a short hike from the fields...kind of a nice treat to see the exhaust is kept a safe distance back from the food.

Owen shows me he is ready to go with all the tools he needs.

(Lucky for him Mum brings the other essentials like sunscreen, a cushion for your knees or bum and lots of water.)

The driver takes us on a flat bed trailer to the spot that is currently being picked.

Owen moves down the rows searching for the ultimate berry!

Lucky for us it was a hot day with no scorching sun.

Owen still needed a rest in between the rows.  Whew!

We were able to haul out 3 baskets of berries between Owen and I.

Nana picked 3 baskets herself.

We do eat some while we work...but after a while you just want to get out of the uncomfortable hunched over position.  So you pick faster...and snack less.  On the ride back to the main buildings, we snack a bit in sheer exhaustion and bliss.  Behind Owen are the baskets picked by the employees.  Those berries are sold at a premium, as "pre picked berries" at the main buildings.  The flavour of home grown, fresh picked berries but without the back pain.

Paulridge Farm has a play area at the main buildings. 

Its a nice little spot to rest up before heading back home.

We had to wait a little bit as Ches and Noah went their own route.

We decided to divide and conquer, splitting our efforts between strawberries and raspberries!

Ches and Noah picked 2 baskets of raspberries, which is saying a lot!

We have found that filling a full basket of raspberries takes twice as long because they are smaller and the bushes hide those ripe suckers!

In the end the boys were happy with the haul.

Total haul:  6 baskets of strawberries, 2 baskets of raspberries, 4 pints of fresh peas and 1 pint each of green and yellow beans.

It took approximately 2 and a half hours from the start of our trip door to door.

We made a huge batch of strawberry jam along with a couple of raspberry jams.

We rinsed and froze some of each kind of berry in large freezer bags.

Some of those frozen berries will turn into smoothies or be inserted into pies or crisps.  The newest thing for us is thawing a few for a batch of home made raspberry vinaigrette. 

All the tops we cut off the berries when we prepared them will go great in our composter too!

We ate the beans and peas almost immediately.

Eating fresh peas from the pods remind me of my childhood driving from Oshawa to a farm in Bowmanville.

My Mom and I would shell and eat them all the way home.

My paternal Grandma Bell was also big on picking your own when they were in season.

Perhaps that is a peak into her farming childhood or a reminder of the hikes in Selwyn Park in the Kawarthas where her and her husband built a cottage on Chemong Lake.

I just hope that my sons take their children picking berries and the tradition will continue.

Memories are made along the journey...not when you get to the destination!

Wild Black Raspberries....rubus occidentalis

A few of the places we've lived have been in rural locations.  Sometimes we've been luck enough to spy the telltale red spikey canes of raspberries!  We cultivate these canes and low and behold, they take over.  We allow these tangles to grow and flourish because we know how awesome the black raspberry is.  It may look like we're the sort of neighbours who let our property go wild.  That just may be the case!  What may look like an unruly yard to some, our boys look at it like its a veritable grocery store.  Case in point, the picture below!



Looks wild...but its really yummy.

 Turns out these yummy wild treats are actually called wild black raspberries or rubus occidentalis by their proper name.  I've included some info that I borrowed from Wikipedia:

Rubus occidentalis is a species of Rubus native to eastern North America. Its common name black raspberry is shared with the closely related western American species Rubus leucodermis. Other names occasionally used include wild black raspberry, black caps, black cap raspberry, thimbleberry,^[1][2] and scotch cap.^[3]
Rubus occidentalis is a deciduous shrub growing to 2–3 m tall, with prickly shoots. The leaves are pinnate, with five leaflets on leaves strong-growing stems in their first year, and three leaflets on leaves on flowering branchlets. The flowers are distinct in having long, slender sepals 6–8 mm long, more than twice as long as the petals. The round-shaped fruit is a 12–15 mm diameter aggregation of drupelets; it is edible, and has a high content of anthocyanins and ellagic acid.^[4][5]
Black raspberries are high in anthocyanins. This has led to their being very useful as natural dyes and, since anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants, to a great deal of interest in them for their potential nutraceutical value. Extensive work has been ongoing at Ohio State University to evaluate their benefit for cancer treatment in mammalian test systems,^[6] and the first clinical trials on patients with esophageal cancer.^{[7]
(source:  Wikipedia, Rubus Occidentalis)}

A closer view of the wild black raspberry...the trick is to wait until they turn black, as their name suggests.  The red one are too tough and they don't "fall" off the cane very easily.  You know you have a ripe berry when you touch it and it basically falls into your palm.  Our neighbourly birds do love them too, but thankfully the canes are thorny, so the birds don't get out of control like they do with our poor strawberries.  They neighbourhood animals appreciate our wild yards...even if our neighbours don't.  Tee hee!



I send the boys out with baskets in the mornings and they pick (and eat) until they are full...then we throw them into pancakes or muffins.  They keep their shape better than commercial raspberries or traditional raspberries.  They are smaller, tougher and sweeter, I find.

If you let enough of the canes take hold, you'll have plenty of berries for freezing, eating and cooking with.  I had some this morning with yoghurt, flax seeds, raw almonds and honey.  YUM!  Since we've identified these wild berries, I can't help but see these canes everywhere!  I spotted some in the back of the parking lot in an industrial area of Kingston, I've seen them all over. 

Look for red canes with small thorns.  They almost look like dogwood, but dogwood has a slightly different colour of red and no spikes. 

Strawberries!

Its a little bit late, but strawberry season is upon us (although I think its just about done at this point...in our area anyway) 

Our strawberry plants took 3 years to make a decent crop.  Growing strawberries is definitely a labour of love and an act of patience.  I was hoping it would be worth it in the long run, but like anything in the garden, you never know how its going to turn out.  This year seemed to be a jackpot, so I decided to forgo the annual strawberry picking trip and try our hand at home harvesting our load of freezer jam.  Its one of our favorite fishing trip snacks as well as a bedtime snack (PB&J sandwiches) so we go through a lot of it!

In previous years, we have gone to two different pick your own places in our area.  Both were 20 min drive away, so I felt good about not using any fossil fuels to get to our berries for a change.  Fruition Berry Farm off of Hwy 15 and Paulridge Berry Farm north of Napanee on Palace rd are both great places.  The kids have enjoyed both farms for picking.  The one thing I'll say is that Paulridge had a lovely shaded area for the kids to play in...which was a welcome site after a couple of hours in the field under a burning hot sun.  Paulridge is typically not open on Sundays...so that's when we opted for Fruition.  The best part about Fruition is they have THE best teenagers working there.  Helpful, polite and eager...which is a great thing when you have a crazy moment of thinking you can pick berries with a 2 yr old in a stroller...by yourself!  (I clearly didn't think that one through)  Both places run about $8.50 per big white basket.  You can bring your own containers and they weigh them on site.  We purchased the big white baskets years ago...for a whole $0.50 a basket.  It added a bit to the price of our berries, but we've used them every year AND we use them in our garden too.  A good investment indeed! 
 

We picked our first batch and ate most of them, throwing some into pancakes to start.  By the second and third pickings, we had enough to make jam.

Crushed berries (1 3/4 cups worth in a liquid measuring cup), 3 cups of white sugar (I cut down the recipe from 4 cups, as our berries were small and super sweet), 2 tbps lemon juice and one packet of Certo.  Its the fabulous no cook recipe!  Stir the sugar and berries and let stand for 5 minutes.  Stir in the rest of the ingredients and let set for 10 min.  

 

Fill plastic containers so that there is about 1 inch left before the lid.  Let stand (covered) on a countertop for 24 hrs.

Freeze in the freezer! 

That's it!  That was all there is to it!!!  We ended up with 6 plastic containers in the freezer, 4 strawberry and 2 strawberry rhubarb.  Now the next sweet berry will be the raspberry.  Blue berries follow shortly after that.  We aren't in a good part of Ontario for peaches or cherries...but one can still hope. 

I have several strawberry recipes that I want to test out this year, but I may have to resort to local picked berries.  Our patch seems to have stopped producing for this year anyway. 

I was so excited to plant strawberries 3 years ago, that I had no idea there were types of strawberries.  I had no idea there was a variety called the ever-bearing strawberry.  Now that I know, I will pass along this piece of advise.  RESEARCH before you do anything...as our plants are now so established...it would be a shame to dig them all up now.  However, the idea of having strawberries for longer than the month of June is almost to much to bear!

Now all that's left to do in our strawberry patch is to keep on top of the runners, which will continue to try and make new strawberry plants until the fall comes.  Its quite a bit of work, but, like I said, its a labour of love.

Are you making any preserves with the sweetness of Ontario summer?  Tell me about it!

When everyone is sick....



a yummy home made smoothie pop!

 For the last few weeks, we've all had some form of sickness...and my two boys were eating popsicle after popsicle after popsicle...I swear I thought I heard my 3 yr old say BRAIN FREEZE for the first time...

After several trips to the grocery store...I decided to put my popsicle making form to good use!  We got a smoothy maker given to us for a wedding present...and its definitely one of those things I couldn't do without.  I make morning smoothies and the recipe for the dandy pop above is a variation on what I make most mornings.

If you ever needed a reason to pick your own fruits and freeze them....THIS IS IT!!!  I couldn't possibly afford to make these if each bag of one kind of fruit is over $5.00 each.  Not only that, but I am convinced that my pops are way better for you....as I know exactly what goes into it!

Now this recipe won't have any amounts on it....because my smoothie maker already has idiot-proof measurements on the side.  The beauty of making your own pops is that you can tailor it to whatever flavours you love!  Plus you can also try new combos that you'll never find in the stores.

I'll run down what I generally put into pop:

Juice of one fresh orange (or grapefruit....I'm discovering how lovely they are in a smoothie)
non-fat yoghurt
1% milk
fresh banana (not frozen)
frozen berries (raspberries, blueberries, strawberries) - i like frozen, but fresh is ok too in a pop
macca protein powder

(in my morning smoothies I add flax seeds as well)

I guess I add the macca powder because as a parent I find that when my children are sick, my biggest concern is that they are getting enough of everything to help them get better faster.  I hate it when a sick child loses their appetite.  It makes my stomach churn with anxiety.  So if I can help their wee throats and stomachs feel better, while also ensuring they are getting some nutrients...I can rest a little easier.  I can see by the big smoothie grins I get from the boys, that I'll be making these well after the summer heat hits us again....

ENJOY!  This recipe is for the sick and well alike!  Don't wait for an illness to hit you to give yourself an excuse to try these darlings out.      

ALSO SHOWN:  an abstract painting I did in 2002