Peaches and Blackberries

It's time again for the berries to be picked. Blackberries, over the last couple of years, have been hit-and-miss. They're notoriously fragile in the heat, so if there are hot days in June, there will be few blackberries in July, when they're supposed to be ripe. That was certainly the case this year. Even as we got out of the car, the guy at the farm asked if we were picking blackberries and said we'd be lucky to find any. As a testament to Rebecca's tenacity, she managed to scrounge up a whole 5lb bucket of them! 

 While she was doing that, I went and picked some yellow peaches. In the past, the danger in the peaches was yellow jackets that wanted them as badly as we did, but this year, there weren't any. That was good. 

However, the beetles were horrendous. If there was a slightly ripe peach, they were all over it. It took me quite a while to pull together a 20-lb basket of them, though not nearly as long as Rebecca with the blackberries. I definitely had the easier job. 

The kids, of course, did there part in eating whatever they put their hands to. :)

Blueberry Picking

It's that time of year again! I really can't recall how many pounds we picked last year, but we were down to our last few so we knew it was time to go get more. This is one of the best things for the kids to pick because there are tons of them that they can reach and they can eat their fill while doing it. This year everyone got into the act. Seriously! Irene was even picking from her perch on Rebecca's back.

The people at Watts Blueberry Farm in Belews Creek are just so fantastic and their bushes are so wonderful that we keep coming back. This is our third or fourth year going to them exclusively (though I think we may have picked a couple of early-season pounds at Buttermilk last year). The haul so far this year? 15lbs. We'll be going back again. It will stay blueberry season until mid-September or so depending on the weather.

Berry Picking

One of the great things about summer is all the fresh fruit and veggies that are coming into season seemingly every day. This week, we took the kids berry picking. First, we went to pick blackberries out in Alamance County, north of Burlington.

This farm grows 7 varieties of blackberries, each quite different from the last. Some were sweet and some were tart; some had thorns and some didn't. After tasting each of them, we decided we liked the "Chester" variety the best, so we spent most of our time picking that particular row.

Each of the kids got into the act, including Ezra, though he mostly picked red ones...

The very next day, Rebecca took the kids blueberry picking. Sadly, they weren't quite in season yet, so they were pretty tart, but they did manage to pick a few. We will be going to pick more in a couple of weeks.