Berry Picking

A week ago a friend stopped by and said she needed my help and to grab a couple large kitchen container.  After sending me back to the kitchen for larger containers, she proceeded to dump the contents of two large ice cream buckets into two largest mixing bowls.  Beautiful, red, juicy strawberries!  

She's getting a bumper crop and has more than she knows what to do with, and we got her "leftovers" - such a sacrifice!  If only we were asked to help out like this more.  Saturday she called to say the patch is still loaded with berries and wondered if the family would like to go out and pick berries sometime.
 

As you know, we really like to pick berries, so today, after attending a pancake breakfast and flag raising at the church to benefit the boy scouts, we drove out to the strawberry patch and picked berries for about an hour, coming home with 15 qts or so of beautiful, sweet strawberries.  I'm thinking I may need to make jam this week!  Especially since the kids want to go back later this week. 

On a side note.  We discovered the super scoops featured in FamilyFun Magazine a while back make excellent berry picking buckets, specifically for kids!  Even Anna could pick up a jug and walk around the patch without spilling any berries.  If your picking berries on larger bushes ... say blue berries or black berries, tie the jug around your waist with a belt or length of rope threaded through the jugs handle.  That way you can pick with both hands and not have to bend over to dump the berries in your bucket.  I'm also thinking these will make good containers for the kids to use in the garden (if it survives our really wet spring!) when it comes time to pick tomatoes, peppers, green beans, peas, our own strawberries, and onions.

I've been using a half dozen or so super scoops in the craft room to hold some of the kids craft supplies ... markers, glue, glue sticks, scissors, etc.  I like that they are made from something I have all the time.  I like how easy they are to make, and how nicely fit on the cupboard shelf.  And I like that the contents are always so easy to access for me and the kids.  I think it would be cool to hang them from a rod along the wall using an s hook of some kind maybe, but for now, they are fine sitting on a shelf, or floating around the house from art project to art project.