I was determined not to miss strawberry picking season this year.  Last year, June past us by and we never made it out.  So this year, I was gung ho about making it to a u-pick farm to make some special memories with the boys, enjoying ourselves and picking delicious strawberries.  At least, that’s how I romanticized the experience in my head.  Mounds of delicious, red, ripe strawberries within reach of every step.  A feeling of satisfaction that we picked these delicious berries with our own hands, straight from the ground.  Seeing the joy in my kids faces as they shared in the experience of the whole things.

Sounds lovely.

Reality struck shortly after we arrived.  The first day of picking season began the day summer vacation started for all the kids.

Here’s what our experience consisted of:

About three hundred other people had the same idea as us.

The strawberry field was overcrowded, not really super ready for picking (um. . . the supply of strawberries was not quite up to par with the amount of eager pickers).

Carter asked me every two seconds to pick a strawberry for him to eat.  I found one ripe strawberry about once a minute, which made it difficult to fill Carter’s requests and my quart container at the same time.

Squatting down is not an easy task for someone largely pregnant.

When you bring a six year old with you, he’s way more tempted to eat what he picks than leaving any in the container, so at the end of the hour, he came to me with ONE strawberry.

We left with a single quart of strawberries.  In one hour.

Perhaps I will choose to remember my romanticized memory instead of the reality.  And perhaps we will try again, at a different farm, in the middle of nowhere.  Maybe we will have more success.  And I will bring James with me too, and he can do all the squatting.