Strawberry Picking

Last week I used one of my days off to drive to Marburger Orchards to go and pick strawberries.



The weather was great and it was just myself and one other lady for a most of the time I was there. The orchard was actaully very pretty. There were several different strawberry patches (the workers told me where to go for the best strawberries) and wildflowers on the borders of every patch.











There were still lots of strawberries to be picked.



Here is just one of three boxes of strawberries that I picked.



I ended up with 18 pounds of strawberries. Wow.

The orchard also has blackberries that will be ready to pick in about a week



and peaches should be ready at the end of the month.



I also spied some vegetable plants on the grounds. Of course their tomato plants were totally kicking my tomato plants butts!

Here's what 18 pounds of strawberries looks like!



I ended up making 15 jars of jam - 11 eight oz jars and 3 pints. I froze both a gallon and a quart sized bag of berries. I may make additional jam (which tastes AMAZING) when I run out and will use some for smoothies. We also kept some for us to munch on.

You can find the jam recipe I used here. I didn't use the low sugar pectin that the recipe suggests. I didn't use 7 cups of sugar though. I only did 6 and it is very sweet. Don't get me wrong, it's amazing jam, but I may try the lower sugar one for the next round. We'll see. The site is also a great reference to pick your own farms in your area.