U-Pick!

A week ago Saturday our friend Becca was visiting from the Bay Area and we decided it was finally time to do some berry picking. So we hopped in the car and headed out into the county to Boxx Berry Farm. It seems as if Boxx has been around forever, I remember going there as a child to pick berries with my mother. My fond memories of picking at Boxx actually served me correctly... the berries were amazing!

We started out picking blueberries. There were so many berries and they were so big that in a short amount of time my berry bucket went from this: 

To this: 

Together Woodley, Becca, and I picked 2 flats of blueberries in less than an hour. They were so beautiful! And, at only $1.75 a pound they were so much cheaper than what we could buy in the store! Yay!

Next, we headed over to the raspberries bushes and started up with fresh buckets. After bending over and kneeling to pick the blueberries it was a nice change to hunt for raspberries while standing up. Actually, we didn't have to do too much hunting since there were so many of them. 

Again our buckets were full in no time. We actually picked 3 flats of raspberries. 

According to the Seattle Times and Wikipedia our county (Whatcom) produces about 75% of the raspberries consumed by the whole nation and it's not hard to believe those statistics after seeing the size and quality of the berries we found. And after paying $4 to $5 for a tiny box of raspberries (half of which were often moldy) in the Bay Area, the $1.75 a pound price (like the blueberries) was unbelievable! We picked 15 pounds. :) 

We couldn't actually fit them all in the trunk of the car so we ended up holding some of them on our laps. We didn't mind a bit since that meant we got to eat a bunch more of them on the way home. Yum.

And now our freezer is filled with delicious frozen berries! Last weekend we made berry pancakes and berry muffins and I'm already scheming about going back to the berry fields to get another batch to turn into jam. 

What a fabulous time of year and what beautiful berries!

p.s. Thanks for all your help Becca! We couldn't have done it without you!

~ElizabethRose