Strawberry Picking 2011

As we have the last 2 years, Madeleine and I took a day off during the week to head out strawberry picking.  We went up to Bagge Strawberries as we typically do one Friday late in June.  Due to the rainy and cool weather, it opened up a little later than it usually does.

The morning we went was nice and sunny and somewhat warm, but by the time we arrived in Independence it was only 63 degrees.  After a brief stop at the local Walmart up there to pick up a sweatshirt for Madeleine, we found ourselves on the back of a golf cart being taken out to the fields.  This year the plants were full of strawberries and they were bigger and sweeter than in years past.

We ended up picking just shy of 20 pounds of strawberries.  They were so sweet this year, that a good portion of them were just eaten as is.  We did make 3 batches of strawberry freezer jam though, so we can enjoy it through the year.

My enthusiastic helper (for the first batch at least):

Mashing away:

This is about 1/4 of the strawberries that we had picked:

Our smaller containers hold 1 cup, the slightly bigger one holds 2 and the last one holds a quart.  My babci (grandmother) had a recipe for raspberry bars using jam.  I am hoping that using strawberry jam will work just as well:

Our own strawberries did not do so well this year.  We had a berry or two that we could pick each day during June.  We came home from vacation to discover the deer trimmed them back for me - down to the ground.  They have already started to recover and are still putting out runners, so I am hoping it was all just cosmetic damage!!