Strawberry Fields Forever

On Saturday, we drove up to the north Georgia mountains to spend the day strawberry picking in Blue Ridge, Georgia. The forecast predicted rain but we thought we'd chance it since we were afraid that waiting would mean the strawberries wouldn't be available later in the month. It took about an hour to drive up to Mercier Orchards on the outskirts of Blue Ridge. They have blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and apple orchards but right now, they only have strawberries available for picking.

That was just fine by me since strawberries are my favorite berry. We'd gone raspberry picking before, but I much prefered the idea of eating my weight in strawberries.

They have several strawberry fields, which they rotate through as people come to pick. Since these fields are spread out throughout the orchard, we had to take a tractor ride to the fields.

It started to sprinkle as we drove out to the field, and it rained through much of our picking. We walked through several rows, finding only small, red ripened fruit to pick before they told us we could move to a different area where there were lots of big, red juicy strawberries just waiting to be picked.

Zara picked a few strawberries, but she mostly just wanted to hold the bucket and offer encouragement.

Adelaide, on the other hand, just wanted to eat the strawberries. She mostly just wandered around, getting wet and muddy, with a strawberry in each hand.

She was delighted with herself.

After filling our bucket and taking a second soggy tractor ride back to the main store, we purchased some apple and strawberry pies from the bakery and bought some strawberry salsa and apple cider. I'm think we'll definitely make a return trip during apple picking season.

We then drove into downtown Blue Ridge (all two streets of it) and ate lunch at Harvest on Main, a local/organic eatery on Main Street. I ate an organic cheeseburger (delicious) and David had some pork sandwich monstrosity.

We wandered a bit through the stores before deciding we'd had enough of the rain and weather (and the kids were in desperate need of naps) and we headed home.

We came home with 2 gallon buckets full of strawberries. We quickly consumed one, but I'm hoarding the rest to use for Adelaide's birthday cake tomorrow.