Important lessons from childhood, in my mind, include being in a garden and eating food straight from the earth. That's why we have gone berry picking every summer since my son was one year old. We skipped his first summer because being a spring baby he was too young, or rather, I was too new to motherhood to attempt it.
The summer he was one, we went strawberry, blueberry and raspberry picking several times. We went to Sam Mazza's in Colchester, Pomykala Farm in Grand Isle, and Blue Thumb Farm in South Hero. I was amazed how readily he picked the berries with his pudgy little hands and knew just to eat the ripe ones. He also bonded with his grandfather picking strawberries from Grandpa's own little strawberry patch in the yard.
The following summer we went strawberry picking at Pomykala Farm and blueberry picking at Blue Thumb Farm more than once. Being two years old, he was in the "you do it" phase. Mostly he would spend his time trying to eat berries out of my bucket, much like the little bear in Robert McCloskey's book Blueberries for Sal.
Image from Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey
This summer he is three and once again we have gone strawberry picking multiple times at Pomykala Farm, and we just did our first blueberry picking outing at Blue Thumb Farm this morning. Actually, since my son is a berry-picking-extraodinaire, today was really his second blueberry picking trip. He went to Blue Thumb Farm with his aunt and grandmother this past weekend too. Big Bro was so helpful filling up the buckets and liked to have contests about who could pick the most berries. He always said he won no matter what though, hmmm... The extra fun part is that today was his little sister's first time blueberry picking (or picking at all, she was asleep for the strawberry picking last month). Just like her brother, she was phenomenal at eating everything she picked and only picked the bluest of the blues.
Blueberry Picking 2011
Blueberry picking 2013
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