We are still members of our farm. Last week we got a bunch of turnips, some garlic, and some peas.

One of the opportunities we’ve had available to us as members is the ability to go pick fresh asparagus and strawberries. We’ve never done it, because in our heads it was just too far to drive, and possibly wasn’t worth the effort. This year we wanted to do it because we thought it’d be a fun activity for us and the wee man. We weren’t wrong – but we weren’t entirely right.

Google Maps puts it at roughly an hour and a half a way. I think that those directions are based on the fact that a lot of the roads to the farm weren’t paved. Well, now they are – we got there in little over an hour, which required us to take various county roads that traveled in straight cardinal directions.

You see those nice clean rows of veggies behind Owen? Our strawberries weren’t there – they were in a weed-filled field. And by weeds I mean undesirable plants that you could smoke if you were really inclined to.

There were tons of berries in there, but the rows were hard to discern, and there was a lot of weeds to fight. We ended up with a pretty good haul, but only made it halfway through our row before Owen decided he was done stumbling over weeds. He was a good sport and made it quite a ways and impressed many of our fellow pickers – but any strawberries he picked did not make it into our box, so he wasn’t very helpful – the moocher. They all went directly into the mouth:

I think we’re going to keep doing this annually. It’s pretty fun, and I think it may be somewhat valuable to teach the kids that strawberries don’t actually come from plastic clamshells at the grocery store. We’re far away from that lesson, but it probably won’t hurt to start early. He wasn’t bothered by bugs or weeds or scratchy plants – which was really cool to see.

The farm also takes volunteers to do farm work – this is something else I’d like our family to be a part of in the future. Again, it’d be neat to have the kids associate that food comes from somewhere and is a lot of work.

The whole album from the pickin’ experience can be viewed by clicking on our bounty below: