It is summer in Minnesota and we’re all anxious for the start of the strawberry season. We’ll have to be patient a bit more as the season will be starting later than usual.
What is it about picking strawberries that makes so many yearn for the start of the season?
- Is it the joy of eating fresh picked, field ripened, juicy sweet strawberries?
- Is it your memories from childhood or that special person you used to pick berries with?
- Is it because of the amazing desserts, jams and jellies you make after a morning picking?
- Is it because you are making memories of your own so that when your children and grandchildren are grown a summer morning will remind them of you?
So many possibilities. For me it is all of the above.
I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota. When the strawberries were ready, we’d go out in the morning, the warm summer breezes wafting through the air, the heat lingering around us. We’d pick, together, my mom, my grandma, my brothers and I. And the fruit, oh my, sweet goodness.
We ate a lot of them fresh, on ice cream, on our morning Cherrios, on home-made angel food cake with whip cream. My mom taught me how to make strawberry jam; we froze them in pint bags to eat during the winter over ice cream or on cake. It was a blessing to have more than we could eat in summer, because during a Minnesota winter those berries reminded us of summers past and a hope that summer was ahead.
How about you? Why do you like strawberry season?
