Yesterday, received a text from Angie, our Sunday herdshare owner, offering her strawberry patch for plundering as she'd taken everything she wanted. I jumped at the opportunity, as our strawberry plants are so high, with such big leaves, that the sun can't ripen the berries, and the guinea fowl root around, unseen, eating to their little hearts content. I picked some the other day, and they were sour, and immediately rotted.
Herbies daughters and grandbabies arrived as a surprise in the early afternoon to spend Fathers' Day afternoon with him. I was caught coming out of the chicken house with my hands full of eggs, and hoped that he arrived home soon, as the previous day he'd staggered home just before 6pm ! Think they had a nice visit. I left to go strawberry picking when they left, so only arrived just before 7pm which was nice weather-wise, not so nice sun-position-wise. Could pick to the East, but the sun shining in our eyes looking West made it impossible to see the strawberries. Angie, her daughter Jessi and granddaughters, Izzy and Ally, all helped me pick. 5 full boxes that canning jars came in, and you could still have picked that amount over again. There were thousands of them. Dark red, and smelling absolutely strawberry-licious. They were all eating while picking, but I never do. Not when picking blueberries or cherries previously either. Maybe I'm weird. We then visited a while, watching the hummingbirds off their back deck. As they have so many family living with them, they go through the milk fairly quickly, so I offered milk in return for the strawberries - something I've a lot of.
Today I spent a couple of hours on my feet in front of the kitchen sink, plucking the little green caps off each strawberry. End result was nearly 37lbs of cleaned strawberries. 20lbs in the big pot with sugar cooking down into jam, (I had to do a WalMart run for sugar, after the huge amount of Dandelion Jelly I made previously) the other 17lbs now in the fridge, waiting for tomorrow. My view is out over the back lawn down to the pastures, so I can keep an eye on all the beasties out there. We also had 3 major thunder storms, could see the ducks enjoying their new pond in the middle of my veggie garden ! Watch the chickens flee to the dryness of the chicken house once the rain started, and the cows and horses all disappeared until the sun came out again. Think I'll Google more strawberry recipes, thinking leather, dried slices for snacking, milk and strawberry pennycools, pink lemonade after the jam and ice-cream topping currently in the pot.
One gets to think a lot while de-capping strawberries. So I did a fair amount of that too.
Saw on the news tonight that people were injured and rooves blown off churches in Portland, just down the road from us. Hope Eric, Liz and their boys are fine, and Herb and Marge, our Wednesday herdshare owners.
As it's already tomorrow morning, I'd better get my tochas up to bed. Milked late, 8:30pm as the girls wouldn't come when I called around noon, so there is 4-gallons of milk in 1/2 gallon jars for herdshare owners in the fridge. Yeah, baby.
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March 2023
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