I took this picture exactly one year ago today. It was the first small batch of strawberries, and I was so excited because there were so many more berries nearly ripe and coming soon.
Strawberries are my favorite food in the world. As a child, all I wanted for my birthday was a strawberry cake. My great grandmother had strawberries in her in-town garden and would make strawberry jam, which I am still convinced, on homemade bread, is the best, most comforting food in the history of the world.
I love the strawberries.
This year, it feels like we are forever away from strawberry season still. It has been cold and gray and rainy, and everything in the garden feels stunted and slow. I have patience for the other things, like the radishes and beets. I am having a hard time waiting on the strawberries.
I just weeded the strawberry beds this morning and studied the state of things. The plants look great, and there are a ton of green berries. But they are all so green! It looks like it will be a couple of weeks before we have strawberries, and I am bummed about this wait. It’s all we can do though, I guess. Just wait and hope for sunshine.
Tom Petty said, “The waiting is the hardest part.” Those are wise words.
I have loved berries for as long as I can remember. I suppose everyone would say that, but berries to me are nostalgia and comfort and joy and beauty. Maybe everyone feels that way about berries?
For me, there’s something extra special about strawberries. Since I was little, they have forever been my favorite food in the world. My great grandmother had a strawberry patch–and she made jam and let me pick berries–and my world was always better at her house. Strawberry ice cream is my favorite ice cream. If I was really lucky, I would get a strawberry shortcake on my birthday. When I was 8 and then 9, I really wanted one of those Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Today, I am convinced I need a farm dress in strawberry print. There must be pockets, of course.
When Ron built raised beds for me to plant strawberries in, I did my research to find a great local berry. Ron was generous with the chicken compost, and our strawberry plants seem very happy in their beds. This year, however, they have outdone themselves. I was a little worried when I saw so many flowers pop up in the spring. I worried about berries being too small. I should not have worried. The berries are perfection. I mean, imagine the perfect strawberry–perfect in size, shape, texture, taste, and color–and that’s what our beds are full of this year. It feels like a miracle.
In fact, today, while picking strawberries for our farm shares, I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of these berries and my hopefulness at sharing them with others that I got a little teary.
Yesterday, we had some friends out to our little farmstead, and they have small children, two girls, who are very little and just fantastic. I think the oldest is about three years old. They came out to meet the baby chicks and pick strawberries. And I have to tell you that the the oldest is a person after my own heart. She seemed to love the chickens, and she really loves strawberries.
I told her she could eat the berries as she picked, as they are organic. We never spray anything, of course. I told her to just watch out for squirrel bites and to not eat those. She was definitely on the lookout for squirrel bites after that. Once she quit worrying about squirrel bites, that kiddo dove into those strawberries, and it made me so happy that I thought my heart was going to burst from the joy of it. I mean, what’s better than a kiddo eating organic strawberries with joyous gusto?
I ate some too. I think we all ate some. The sun was shining, the breeze was cool, and the strawberries were–as you know–perfect. We picked so many berries that I thought surely we had made a dent in them, but today, when Ron and I went outside to pick for the farm shares, it was like the strawberries decided to be extra generous from all of that joy yesterday. I am certain, just absolutely certain, that the strawberries felt all of our gratefulness yesterday. They must have.
And I’m fairly certain the strawberries decided to be extra generous in return.
