Strawberry Season

I try to buy and consume local produce as often as I can.  During the warmer months, its much easier to do than during the winter months.  In my backyard, I grow my own tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes and lettuce.  This year I have also added swiss chard as well.  Truly organic veggies!  I'm not a huge advocate on the whole organic thing, but thats because there's no real regulations on what organic means in Canada.  I just like because I know i didn't put any pesticides/fertilizer in my food, that I will be consuming that much less of those chemicals in my system.

Canada Day, I didn't have anything to do.  Nothing was open, and well, the places that were open, would have been rammed with people.  And seeing that I can get a bit claustrophobic, I try and avoid those situations as much as I can.  The local farm that I tend to buy my summer veggies from turned out to be open all day on Canada Day and they have Pick Your Own (PYO) strawberries.  So the hubby and I decided that it would be fun to go pick some strawberries.  Well, I wanted to pick strawberries because I've never done it before, and the hubby just wanted to play with another new camera he bought.

19th Avenue Farms charge $5 per person over the age of 5 to enter their strawberry fields.  You can either bring your own containers or buy their plastic buckets to hold the strawberries.  Once you pay, you board a their bus which takes you to their back field where the strawberry fields are located.  I never  realized how big this farm was!  You then get assigned to a strawberry 'row' and that is all yours for the picking.  Your row would not have been picked at all for the the day, ensuring that there are ripe berries for you to be plucking and taking home.  You are told not to jump from row to row, but there were both kids and adults doing that.  I was all prepared for the muddy soils, until when I got to my row, that they had placed clean hay between the strawberry rows to make sure that your shoes don't get dirty.  First thing the hubby noticed was, wow these strawberries are tiny!  He's used to eating supermarket strawberries which are huge and pumped full of fertilizer.  I couldn't help it, and snuck a few fresh strawberries as soon as I plucked them off the plant.  After about an hour, we were happy with our haul and got back on the bus to take us back.  Our haul ended up costing $20 something.  But they deduct the $5 admission fee off the cost of the strawberries.  So essentially the $5 fee is to ensure a $5 minimum is spent.

Strawberry Haul!

Belly 16 Vanilla Bean Ice Cream & Fresh Strawberries