Strawberry picking at W&A Farms

This past weekend, we went strawberry picking and then hosted a barbecue. It was our first time picking strawberries and our first barbecue of the year. Hooray for summer! :)

We went to W&A Farms in Richmond since that was the closest u-pick strawberry farm to our home. They also advertised that they don't use chemical sprays on their berries, which I liked. We headed out late in the morning so that it wouldn't be too hot. There weren't that many people there and we saw that there were tons of unpicked strawberries in the field. I would say about 85% of the berries were ready to be picked too. In fact, I'm not sure they will be able to pick them all in time.

Compared to blueberries, strawberries were easy to pick and we filled our two buckets in maybe 20-30 minutes. We picked 10.5 pounds and were charged $2/lb at this farm. Our total came to $21, which wasn't that cheap but they were local berries so they definitely tasted better than store bought ones. I heard that Emma Lea Farms is a larger farm and they charge $1.50/lb down there. Both berries taste great!

Tristan helped pick some for the initial 5 minutes and then he wasn't too interested. He just wandered around nearby. He was pretty well behaved considering Jean-Louis and I were both picking. He never tried eating any berries since we told him he wasn't allowed to before we got there. He did step on berries trying to hop over the berry lanes though. Oops.

Strawberry season doesn't last long in Vancouver so if you want to go picking, go now! If you are curious about picking, I recommend browsing Chef Heidi Fink's blog post on strawberry picking. There are some good tips there and I made sure I showed Jean-Louis the post before we headed out.






I think we did good, don't you? :)






When life gives you strawberries, you make strawberry cake with strawberry meringue buttercream!! Right? ;)