The local community college horticulture department has a “you-pick” garden. I hadn’t been before, but I loaded the kids up and took them over to the garden to see what we could get. What we ended up with was 4.5 lbs of fresh raspberries!
I forgot my camera, but I tried to get some of the evidence of the trip when we got home. We all had purple fingers, and my arm was criss-crossed with red scratches – but it was worth it!
S came to me a few times to show me how much was in her basket, and when she saw how my pile was growing, she began to take her task very seriously. I showed L how to lift up the bottom branches and find what other people had missed, but she didn’t care to get her arms scratched. J kept coming back to me to show me his basket was empty. I’d help him pick a few and I’d dump some from my basket into his … and he’d come back with purple lips and an empty basket again a few minutes later.
(I was worried about taking my kids to a you-pick place and having them eat while picking. Then the girl who showed us what rows to pick and showed the girls to pick the purple berries assured us, “And we don’t spray, so you can eat them right off the bush as you go!” I was glad to not worry about J eating more than he picked.)
I also got a minute to talk to the horticulture student about how to plant/grow raspberries in Idaho. I did plant three of them this year, but they all died. According to her, I didn’t water them near enough. I’ll try again next summer.
My first project with the berries looked like this. Homemade raspberry jam. Mmmmmm!
Then L suggested we make a raspberry pie. I’d never done that before, but I figured it was worth a try.
(There are my jam jars in the background) The pie turned out … AMAZING. Ok, so the crust is a bit brown, but the rest of it was heaven!
I’m pretty sure we’ll be making a trip to the college gardens again.
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