The Thornells: Berry Pickers

Since John has been out of town, I decided to head to Stephenville to visit everyone for a bit. Since I was going to have extra time, I wanted to get a few "touristy" things in that we normally don't have time to do when we visit on the weekend.

One thing I wanted to do was visit the Worthington Orchards to pick berries. Blackberries are in season right now and I thought the kids would have fun picking the berries.

It was a perfect morning with a bit of an overcast so it wasn't as hot (still hot, just not as hot). We picked up our buckets and headed out to the berry patch, our mission, pick all the blackberries we could fit in our buckets. This was a fun way to reinforce colors (at least black and red) as we had to pick the ripe, black berries. The red berries were really tart, and not quite ready to be picked.

Even though Abby is our Easter egg hunter, Jake proved to be our berry picker. He set out on a mission and wouldn't move to the next bush until all the black berries were picked. Abby was easily distracted and would move up and down the row more quickly. However, she sometimes moved a little to quickly and would dump her bucket of berries. I think we picked her berries off the ground at least three times!

Blackberry bushes have thorns so I think next time, we'll come back during strawberry season or bring gloves. All of our little hands were scratched and sore by the end of our trip.

The kids had a blast and even ate a few berries along the way. We only went up one row and down another and managed to pick 7 pounds of blackberries (that's probably around 20 cups of blackberries)! That's a lot of blackberries. My mom made blackberry cobbler and pancakes, my sister made a pie, and I'm making a pie as well once I pick up my berries from my mom's freezer (I forgot to grab them before we came home :-).

The kids had a blast and I definitely want to come back next year for strawberries...that's one of their favorite fruits.