Since our strawberry plants are not quite producing a bumber crop, we went strawberry picking today at Porter's Farms at 3504 NC Hwy 42 in Willow Springs near Fuquay Varina (www.porterfarmsandnursery.com). The berries are beautiful and taste great! And they had TONS of berries when we picked them on Friday afternoon. We ended up picking two large containers weighing just over 10 lbs total (5 lbs each) for $14. That comes to $1.27 per pound - a good price for fresh berries! We have already eaten a bunch and will give some to my parents and then freeze some as well. The very nice woman who owns the farm gave each of the girls a very cute little strawberry coloring/activity book from the NC strawberry growers assoc. Before we went picking, we did a lesson on strawberry farms in NC and throughout the country. If you are looking for some free resources I recommend this site. http://www.ncstrawberry.org/index.html It has kids printable activities and coloring pages, recipes, info for educators, and a directory of strawberry farms in NC. Did you know that NC is the fourth largest producer of strawberries in the US? Calif. is number 1. Enjoy berry season! Faye
My daughter's kindergarten class is going on a field trip to Smith's Nursery on Tuesday. I'm going with them and can hardly wait to fill some buckets up. I LOVE fresh strawberries!! :-D
Think I'll pop on out there before the festival and pick my own. I usually end up freezing some. Frugal, speaking of freezing, what ways do you use to freeze strawberries? I want mine to last longer than before. Frogger
I freeze mine whole after hulling them. I spread them out on a cookie sheet after washing and freeze. That way, they won't be all clumped together and I can take out how ever many I want!
Frogger, I do the same thing PirateG does. I remove the stem, dry them and put them in the freezer. They will be a little mushy when thawed but perfect for smoothies, baking and topping shortcake/pound cake. Ummmm.....confession time..... we have eaten 9 pounds of the berries we picked on Friday. We had them with every meal and for snacks. They were sooooooooo good! LOL. Now we have to go back this week to pick more for freezing (and eating!).
Thanks Pirate, Frugal. That's how I do it too, just wondering if anyone did anything different. Frugal...NINE POUNDS...gotta love them strawberries . Frogger
My daughter and I went yesterday and those strawberries are scrum-dilly- um-cious We had the baby with us and got him some of their ice cream, just a little vanilla, boy did he learn how to use a spoon fast and you should have seen how much he got on him it was too cute!
