Strawberries!!

I have been wanting to go strawberry picking with Jamie since we got married, and after almost 8 years we finally made it! There is a little farm about an hour away and we met up with some friends to go berry picking yesterday. The farm was amazing, it had rows of all sorts of berries and vegetables (only strawberries were in season, we will need to go back later this summer), and then they had a little store with all of their produce and a bakery, a park and a petting zoo. All of us had a great time! It has been raining all weekend and when I called my friend to see if we were still on she told me if I waited until it wasn't raining in England I would never leave the house! So we bundled up, packed the raincoats and managed to stay relatively dry.

The berries were in this tarped tunnel, I am used to fruit picking in the sun so hearing the rain outside was a little strange. Jamie was an awesome berry picker, the variety was small but super sweet so we had to pick quite a few. I hauled home 11 lbs!

Hadley even helped find a few

She mostly just enjoyed playing in the dirt and squishing the berries between her fingers

Yum! We picked up a few scones in the store on the way out and had Strawberry Shortcake for dessert that night.

Next stop was the playground, she loves the swings.

Checking out the goats, apparently they bite so no feeding or touching!

She did get to pet the sheep, so soft! We have been working on animal sounds at home, so when we got up to the sheep we said "sheep go baa", and she instead growled at the mama sheep. In her defense, the sound this mama sheep made was more of a loud bellow than a demure "baa". We also saw a cow, ducks and baby ducks and a hideously ugly long-haired pig.

I froze some for smoothies and made a batch of strawberry jam tonight. It was my first attempt at home, I have made jam for food companies but the pectin, times and heating temps are different so we will have to see how this turns out! They dont really sell canning jars except online and they are kind of expensive, luckily a lady told me last fall to save all of the jars I used during the year. I know you are jealous of my food photo skillz...

The jam is still setting but we ate the extra on homemade cresent rolls tonight (super easy recipe I found while blog hopping), so delicious! I may need to defrost more berries and make a extra batches so it lasts us more than a few weeks!