4.5
So, before…read morecoming to Valley Home Farm, I always thought early summer was peak strawberry season. Perhaps in other places it is. In Tennessee, if you want strawberries, you'd better come with your mom because those suckers are ready to be picked around early to mid-May. This is just one of the things I learned during my time at Valley Home Farm.
Despite getting to the Farm about a week too late for strawberries, I was just in time for blackberries and blueberries. AND if I wanted strawberries that had been turned into such wonderful things as pies, cakes and jams, I was in luck as well. Let me back up. Wartrace is a not close to Nashville. You have to come here with intention. I'd been plotting to check out the farm as soon as I heard it was a berry-tropolis. So, one Sunday late morning, I finally got my act together, headed east on 24 and made my way into the country. I pulled up to a big white house, a country store and fields of berries so ripe/fresh, it was all I could smell once I exited the car. Yes. I was at the right place.
I walked inside and proudly bellowed my plan to eat all the strawberries. I quickly exposed myself as a know-nothing city slicker. The owners politely disabused me of my notion and let me know what I was going to do: I was going to take some baskets, I was going to look for black and/or blueberries, I was to know which ones to pick by the following elements, and I would like it. If I had to have strawberries, i could plan better for next year or buy a cake. It all sounded reasonable. I headed out to the fields and ran into some other pickers. They gave me some great tips about where to go for the best berries and I set on my way. I hadn't been berry picking since I was a kid. My memories of doing so were of my parents picking berries and me sitting on the grass eating as many as I could stuff in my mouth. These were good memories and, now, being in the 'parent' role, it made me think about having kids of my own to watch gorge themselves on berries as I did the picking.
One day.
But, back to the business at hand: berry picking. Not only is it fun, it's mildly therapeutic. AND it's incredibly cheap. Two baskets of fresh-picked berries (of both kinds) amounted to an extremely fair price. I had the added satisfaction of knowing that I picked them and they were all berries I found attractive enough to want to put in my belly. To the surprise of everyone (including me), I passed on buying any strawberry ice cream, pies, cakes, or popsicles. I know! A.) I didn't think the frozen items would make it back to Nashville in one piece and B.) I was satisfied getting the healthy, fresh stuff. I didn't want to compromise my clean living that quickly.
Being able to 'farm' like this is one of the reasons you live here. You should probably do it more often. I know I plan on doing so.
P.S. Wild (fresh) blackberries are really bitter. Like, just thinking about them makes my mouth pucker. Who was the evil genius who made them part of the delicious berry pantheon of straw, blue and rasp? If you pick buckets of the things, have some recipes in mind to polish them off. Or, gift them to some know-nothing city slickers.
