Fruit Picking!

This weekend we had a fun outing where we went fruit picking at a farm near us called Larriland.

It was the perfect day to go since it was finally under 90 degrees. Still humid as heck, but at least it wasn't too hot. 

Larriland has a lot of different crops you can pick, but we chose peaches, blueberries, and blackberries. Zahara went here last year with her camp, but for the rest of us, this was our first time picking these particular crops. We usually pick apples in the fall, and we've picked raspberries from our garden in England. I was expecting the peaches to be like apple picking and the berries to be like the raspberry experience. But they were different. 

The peaches were on short trees that were full of ripe fruit. But unlike apple picking, the ripe peaches don't just fall off when you twist them. You still have to give a slight yank to get them off. The way you tell if a peach is ripe is if it is uniformly pink/red, versus yellow. The side with the dimple, or cheek, will get red first, but you need to check the other side for ripeness.

I'm not usually a huge fan of blackberries. I find them a bit tart. Zahara really wanted to pick blackberries, but Asher and I wanted to pick blueberries, so we decided to split up. Dan and Z went to one field, and Ash and I went to the other. It was actually really nice to get a little alone time with Asher. He's so funny and interesting at this age. He never stops talking, which can sometimes be a lot, but I'm grateful he wants to share his thoughts with me.

Blueberry picking was not nearly as thorny as raspberry picking. I was surprised that the berry bushes were at eye level, so I didn't need to bend over to pick, but berries were low enough that Asher could easily reach as well. The berries come off very easily, and you're looking for berries that are uniformly blue. These are so sweet! I can't wait to snack on these all week.

Zahara and Dan had fun with the blackberry patch too. Dan said he was surprised that they weren't very thorny either. And these fruit are enormous! They are much sweeter than I've had before, so they must be perfectly ripe.

We'll be turning the peaches into ice cream and eating the other fruits as is. I'll let you know how it turns out!