To finish off the holidays in preparation to go back to work bleary-eyed and mushy-tailed tomorrow morning, we decided to take a gap in the weather, head to the country and spend a few hours picking strawberries. We went to our "local" haunt, which is Yrjölän Marjatila - Yrjölä's berry farm.
Paavo Yrjöla was known as "The bear of Hämeenkyrö" and won gold in the Decathlon at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. There are pictures of him up in the café.
We got there at about 1130, but had to wait in a queue for a half an hour because we weren't the only ones to have the idea. The carpark was the fullest I have ever seen it - to the point that there was no more carpark, just field.
Should have brought a tractor.
This is a strawberry and raspberry farm, but the strawberry season has finished, so it was only raspberries this year. They also have a few other berries and peas. They had a slightly better set up than last year, as they sell the picking box as well as plastic freezer containers, so they can go straight into those, without having to transfer them at home.
Some people bring their own containers, but it is far more hassle, as they have to be weighed first, so that they can be subtracted from the total weight later. It doesn't save much money, as they will have to still be transferred into the freezer containers later anyways.
The cost is 5€ per picker, which gets subtracted from the total later. They do this to cover their bases for what people eat whilst picking, as for example, I must have eaten about 100 raspberries myself.
They are bloody delicious.
You can see above the stand that holds the boxes, which makes it far easier, rather than bending down all of the time. Once paid up, we get directed to a line and a side of raspberry bushes and we then go through picking the ripe ones, leaving the unripe and dicing the overripe ones into the walkway.
We were picking for about two solid hours. Whilst it felt slow going at the start, because I think people had gone through part of our row in the morning, the last half went very fast.
The speed was probably further influenced by my belly being full at that point too.
Once we were finished picking for the day, it was back to wait in a line for 20 minutes (I haven't seen it this busy before), to get our berries weighed and paid. We picked 32 containers full, which came in at a little over 6 kilograms (13 pounds), at a total price of 75€ for the day. For reference, I checked prices and it is about 40€ a kilo at the moment, so this works out to around half the price + work and a bit of fuel (this is about 40km from our home) - minus what we ate.
But cost aside, it is a nice way to spend a few hours as a family.
What the hell are we going to do with all these raspberries?
Well, since they will only last a few days in the fridge, we are going to freeze them. Raspberries freeze very well and if careful, will even hold their shape after defrosting. We put them on yoghurt, porridge and into the occasional pie, which is where some of these are going to go for Smallsteps' upcoming birthday.
We have a chest freezer at home for this kind of food, which comes in handy as we fill it up with stuff when we can to use throughout the year, or have on hand in case of emergencies. We used it more during Covid times.
But before they go into the freezer, each container gets a half tablespoon of sugar sprinkled on top, which will keep them from becoming bitter in the freezer. Well, a bit bitter, because these are really sweet ones.
And there we have it.
A day of raspberry picking over and, a month of vacation sadly over too. Now, it is back to work in the morning, which is going to be a shock to our morning routine of sleeping through breakfast.
I am not looking forward to going back to work at all, but by the same token, it might also be nice to have some routines again. A month is a long time on vacation and perhaps it is too long. When Smallsteps is a little older and doesn't need constant supervision, we will likely split our holidays a bit more, so that we can take two week slots, or save a week for later in the autumn to travel away from the wet Autumn.
For this summer though, it has been a pretty decent block of time off and I am grateful that for one year at least, there weren't any major dramas to stop us from enjoying it.
How long til Christmas??
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
