The Glories of Produce

Beautiful day yesterday, and the first day of the week the kidlets don't have obligations after school. So pick up time felt early--too early to just go home and do homework and shit. They wanted to do something FUN!

We went raspberry picking.

We go to a place that is someone's home, with a huge near farm-sized lot. She has about 25-30 rows of raspberris, with nearly a thousand bushes. We were the only ones there.

There is a treasure hunt involved in berry picking. You want to find ones that are ripe--if they are bright red, like strawberries, they aren't ready yet and will taste bitter. The wine-dark ones are best, but only if they haven't gotten too dark. Once they are too ripe, they fall apart into their component drooplets, and you end up with juice and not berry.

On a beautiful day, you can afford to be finicky. You need to find just the right balance of purple and red in the color, and then you can reject any berry based on asymetrical drooplets. They should fall off the bush with the slightest of pressure--but if they fall off before you pull at all, then they are too ripe.

When you pick your own, you get to sample as you go--Juanita only charges for the berries you actually bring back in your bucket. So you get the sun-warmed flavor of berries as you go--some are purely sweet, some have a little bitterness to give them a kick in your mouth.

The Pony now likes raspberries, and she sampled many before determining the color characteristics of the ones she wanted to pick. The Bunny doesn't like to eat raspberries because they taste "too hairy."

We left with 4 pints of berries for $10 (way cheaper than at the grocery) and a lovely afternoon together. Given the stress of school right now, an afternoon like that is priceless.