U PICK!

Me and mine have had a very full holiday weekend. We spent lots of time with friends, worked in the yard, and managed to start a serious home demolition project in our living room. But the biggest hit of the weekend, and seriously the most favorite thing I've done in forever, was going to McBride Berry Farm in Mapleton, Utah to pick raspberries and blackberries. I found the farm on http://www.pickyourown.org/ which is a really great resource for finding YouPick farms across the country.

The idea of going and picking a crop fresh from the farm that grows it has appealed to me since becoming more aware of the concept of community supported agriculture, which is basically shorthand for saying you support the farming in your region by directly giving the farmers the money for their products, as opposed to grocery store or mega stores. I also felt a pick your own experience would be a great learning opportunity for my kids (and me) to see first hand how a specific food we eat grows and what kind of labor it takes to get it to our table. Going to pick berries seemed like a good fit for our family because we eat them in a serious way around here in smoothies and over our morning granola and yogurt. I usually rely on the big frozen bag of mixed berries from Costco or splurge and buy "fresh" from the store (which I now realize is clearly not the right word. ) And happily it turns out that at $3/pound, picking the berries fresh is way more economical than buying them in tiny plastic clamshells! My plan was to go pick a lot and then make some jam and then freeze the rest to use over the next few months.

So on Saturday we loaded up and headed an hour or so south to the farm and picked our hearts out. The farm was a good size but certainly not some huge corporate operation. It is owned and run by a very sweet couple, Wayne and Joyce McBride, (that's Wayne in the photo above) who were right there to hand us buckets and give us a quick lesson in the art of picking. The raspberries were so beautiful and ripe and the canes were bending over with the weight of them. Jaren, Cleo, Flynn, and I all picked right along side each other, listening to the bees buzz around and just enjoying the peace that comes from a nice, unhurried task. We ended up picking 16 pounds in a couple hours! The blackberries were my favorite to pick. You had to work more for them, really digging through to the middle of the canes to find the ripe ones, but man, the good berries would practically fall right into your hand when you touched them, they were so ripe and ready to be eaten. And they taste unlike ANY blackberry I've ever bought at the grocery store. They are absolutely black, with no hint of red on the berry, and are plump with juice, and super sweet and a bit wild tasting. I couldn't help but think how luxurious it felt to be eating something picked at the peak of ripeness, it just isn't an everyday experience.

I am happy to report that the kids enjoyed our adventure just as much as we did. Every kid I've ever known has relished picking leaves and flowers in the yard to a fault We battle with our kids constantly about what is and is not okay to pick. (All the flowers on Mom's cucumber plants NO; all the purple flowers on our vinca groundcover FINE...you get the idea.) To get to turn them loose and tell them to pick every single berry they see felt pretty liberating for all of us. Cleo filled her bucket about as fast as we did, and at one point, she turned to us and claimed "this is more fun than Lagoon!" (A local version of a Six Flags so that is saying a lot!) And aIthough I don't think Flynn's bucket ever saw a single berry, his berry stained fingers, cheeks, and chin were proof of just how much he was enjoying his own brand of picking. HIs diapers may never be the same!

It was a successful outing and one that I would definitely recommend and will now turn into a yearly family tradition. Next up: turning all that bounty into jam!

P.S. If you are in the Salt Lake area, the McBride's are having a banner year for their berries and predict they will be open into October. There address is 1849 S. 2100 W., Mapleton, UT

Go check it out and have fun picking and eating!