Would you look at those berries!

There’s 14 ice cream buckets of berries there – yes 14!

Would you believe our 8 little strawberry plants produced such bounty?! Yeah – I didn’t think so.

Actually – they didn’t come from my pathetic patch. Our good friends Laverne and Caroline offered us the opportunity to pick their patch. They moved into an Amish house a few months ago – and with the house came an Amish sized strawberry bed.

This was the first big picking – and we were all amazed at the size and number of berries.

We picked 15 buckets total – they  just kept one and sent the rest with us. Laverne just smiled and said, “I know where we can get some more!”

Oh yeah – they will be picking strawberries enough for an Amish family of 12 every other day for the foreseeable future! 🙂

So what did I do with all those berries?

The first thing we did was to wash a handful and one at a time we dipped them in sour cream and rolled them in brown sugar before eating them.  Heavenly!

Then it was time for the real work to get started.

Angel Girl and Buddy  were the only kids at home – so we sat them at a table hulling strawberries all day long. They started at 11:00 – had about a half hour break for lunch – and finished at 5:30.

They had a great time! Seriously – they did, mostly because I let them watch movies while they worked. So, other than being covered with sticky strawberry juice and having sore fingers, they were happy campers. Being able to watch TV for 5 hours straight was a real treat!

While they were enjoying their Veggie Tales marathon – I took their finished berries and made 2 fresh strawberry pies, 11 pints of jam, 10 quarts of sauce, and froze 10 quarts of berries. The rest we ate fresh or I put in a huge berry bowl in the fridge.

I think I can honestly say that that is more strawberries than I have ever worked with at one time in my life!

I think I can also say that I used to really envy those Amish strawberry beds – but no longer.  My dream strawberry patch has gotten much, much smaller! 🙂

Bless you Laverne and Carolyn!