Strawberry Pickin'

This morning we visited Sweetberry Farms in Marble Falls to pick some strawberries.  We decided to get there as early as possible to be guaranteed some excellent picks.  We were not disappointed.

Luke was excited to ride in his wagon on this beautiful day.

This one looks just right.

and so does this one...

Here are some of our picks...delicious!

Luke thought this was pretty funny.

Luke loves animals...and he has no fear of them at all.

"See over there, kitty, those are baby goats."

"How does this feel, kitty?"

taking it all in...

I can help you all pull this for a little while.

Fellow early strawberry pickers in one of the fields.

We couldn't leave without getting a cup of homemade strawberry ice cream.

Mommy, you can't feed me fast enough, let me do it.

When we arrived back home, we had to do something with all of the strawberries we picked.  Drew washed all of the strawberries and divided them into two containers:  one for the ripe, and the other for the "ripe in a couple of days."  I used the really ripe strawberries to make this Strawberry Angel Trifle--a recipe I found on the Sweetberry Farms website.  I used homemade angel food cake and homemade vanilla pudding instead of store-bought cake or instant pudding, so hopefully it is good.  We can't wait to eat it!  

Here is a link for a photo album of today's adventure if you're interested in seeing more:  Strawberry Pickin'.

Lastly, I will leave you with a few random, but interesting, facts about strawberries:

• A strawberry has, on average, 200 seeds.  Strawberries are the only fruit with seeds on the outside.
• Ninety-four percent of U.S. households consume strawberries at least once a year
• Strawberries have a long-dated history of medical uses, the Romans for instance used them to alleviate symptoms of fainting, kidney stones, inflammation, diseases of the blood, liver and spleen, throat infections, bad breath, attacks of gout, melancholy and fever
• The etymology of the name "strawberry" is still largely unproven: some argue that they were named in the nineteenth-century by English children who picked the berries, strung them on grass straws and sold them as "Straws of berries". Others theorize that the name was derived from the nineteenth-century practice of placing straw around the growing berry plants to protect the ripening fruit
• Strawberries are the first fruit to ripen in spring
• Strawberries were a symbol of perfection and love: for instance, folklore says that if you split a double strawberry in half and share it with a member of the opposite sex, you'll soon fall in love. Medieval stonemasons carved strawberry designs on altars and around the tops of pillars in sacred places such as churches, as a symbol of perfection
• Strawberries are grown in every state in the United States and every province of Canada.