Crafty Genius: Fruits of our Labors 2011

I know I posted last fall about our little raspberry patch, and how well it had started to grow. It's July/August now, and we've been getting raspberries. Not tons, just a couple of handsful. But at least it's not October. Late July and early August are supposed to be raspberry season. It's normal. It's what people who actually grow raspberries expect.

My parents have a rather sizable raspberry patch in their garden. Every year they get a very good harvest, and every year they threaten to downsize. In their defense, I think they actually DO thin out and remove a large portion of their patch. Raspberries grow back every year. Every year, mom and dad get overwhelmed by their harvest. When they've eaten and baked and canned and frozen and jammed as many of their raspberries as they can stand, they start offering the pickings to friends and family. I am family. Mom called last week and offered me a picking. I wasn't able to take advantage of it then, because Tad and Scott were on their way home, I had things to do and Hailey had things to do. I mentioned that we could maybe come later THIS week and pick. We scheduled Friday morning, but the weather, other pickers and other events compelled us to go on Thursday. It actually worked out to be the best day. I wished that I'd had my camera with me, but didn't take it, so I don't have pix of us actually in the berry patch. This is our harvest, though. For one day. One hour's work.

That's a LOT of berries. It might not look like a lot, but those are all of my biggest bowls. I have to say right now that Jessie LOVES raspberries, but she is now 4 states away. Scott HATES raspberries, which is why we didn't go earlier in the week. I thought it would be an insult to him to make him help pick on one of his very limited days at home, especially when he doesn't like them. Hailey CLAIMS to not like raspberries, but we dragged her out to the berry patch anyway. She's a teenager. She lives at home. She's cheap labor. (I actually caught her eating a few berries. Mmm Hmmm.) Tad also LOVES raspberries. He's the biggest reason I agreed to go pick at Mom and Dad's. They brought him 2 bowls (big bowls) of berries for his birthday last week. We ate most of one. The other got incorporated into the above mentioned bowls of fruit. I also LOVE raspberries, but this is still a LOT of berries.

Berries need to be processed fairly quickly. I knew we couldn't put them off for more than a day. This, then, is how we spent our Friday afternoon.