Strawberrying

Last Tuesday, we went to "The Berry Patch" or Gallmeyer Farms (http://gallmeyerfarms.com/the-berry-patch/) to pick strawberries. Carl and I wanted some for eating and using in smoothies, and Regina wanted some to make some jam.

"Please Do Not Eat the Berries"

This restriction is evidently due to COVID-19 - they want you to take the berries home and wash them, not risking any contact with virus from previous pickers by eating in the field...

The berries are ripening late this year due to unseasonably cool weather - so there are still more berries coming on.

We got 4 double baskets to start - Regina got her two filled first and went up to the check in area to drop those off and to get two more. Though Carl and I were both filling ours, we were slower than Regina!

They had the fields marked out in grids and asked us to not have more than 10 people in a grid area. For the most part while we were there, there were only folks who had come together in each marked area (so 2-4 folks per grid).

Our two baskets

Once we had filled our two original baskets, we took them up and got two more and picked two for contribution to Regina's jam making (yum!).

Everything is having to be done a little differently due to virus restrictions. The farm had an outdoor washing station set up and asked everyone to wash up before coming to get our baskets. I was glad that they had the outdoor washing station as I used it after picking too (my arms seem to be very sensitive to some leaves of fruits and vegetables, but if I wash pretty soon, I won't get bumps). It was a fun few hours and we've enjoyed the results of our labor multiple times in the past few days!