Berry Picking at Emma Lea Farms

Last year we went to W&A Farms to pick strawberries. It was close to us and when we were there in June, there were a ton of strawberries. This year we decided to go to Emma Lea Farms. It was a bigger farm but it also took us around 35 or 40 minutes to get there. I heard good things about this farm and I liked that strawberries, raspberries, and tayberries were all in season right now. I had never picked raspberries or tayberries at a farm before.

July is actually a bit late for strawberry picking. This was actually their last weekend for u-pick. It totally showed! It took us much longer than last year to fill our two buckets. The berries were still very good but you had to work much harder to find them. We may have been a bit late coming out to pick strawberries this year but apparently we were too early for the raspberries and tayberries. It took even longer for me to fill my tray half way with raspberries. I would have to say that at least 80% of them were not ready to be picked. As for the tayberries, the ones I saw were not ready at all. I tried one and it was no good. Yuck. I wasn't sure because they looked quite red but they were SOUR! Maybe in a week or two they will be awesome. So even though their website advertised that raspberries and tayberries were ready for picking now, they really are not:(

 

Three eagles flying overhead.

I was bummed we didn't get any tayberries but look at all the raspberries and strawberries we got!

What the heck are we going to do with all this? In fact, we always find ourselves in the same situation year after year. We are so greedy that we absolutely have to pick berries until our buckets are full. It's silly because we can never eat or bake with this many. So far we have frozen some, ate lots and I made a raspberry tart. I also plan to make berry mousse, maybe freeze more, and the rest may just go into berry lemonade. Thank god for the freezer, eh?