Phew, what a day!! The interns were in the fields picking strawberries from 9:00-4:30 (with a short lunch break). It was quite the day of picking! I had about 25 flats of berries on order and was hoping we would get that many flats, but in the end we picked 55 flats! Plant sales, customers to talk to, berries to find homes for, John had an afternoon class on weeding and pest management, and we start a 5 day training tomorrow morning - May is busy, wait a minute it isn't even May yet!!! Yikes!! I guess life is busy - especially in the Spring! I do apologize for the lateness of the email for the April 28 CSA week (hopefully the week of May 5 will not be late :).
BTW: If you want to put berries in your freezer you can come out to the farm and pick them up for $48 a flat (our best price). Please text me to place Sunday orders. Oh, and FYI we are having a open house on Mother's day (more on that coming) and that is a great day to buy berries! Text orders to Pam's Cell phone 931-626-3201
Strawberry Processing tips:
Method 1 - empty pints of berries, no washing, tops and all into gallon zip lock bags (6 pints to a gallon). This is a very fast way to take care of the berries and if you are using them for smoothies that little green cap will only add nutrition to the smoothie.
Method 2 - Rinse the berries (never submerge just lightly sprinkle), remove the tops and put them whole in gallon bags. These berries will also be nice for smoothies but don't have the added fiber of the green top.
Method 3 - Rinse berries, remove the green tops, cut in half or slice as you like. place cut berries in quart bags (alternative, cut berries in half or quarters and freeze on a cookie sheet, when frozen use a spatula to loosen and pack into quart bags). This is what I do for making delicious pancake sauces.
Pancake sauce recipe: place 1 quart of frozen berries in a sauce pan. add 1/4 c water, 1/4 c cane crystals, and bring to a boil. In 1/4 cup water dissolve 2T of corn starch and add it to the berries when they are boiling. Bring the berries and cornstarch mixture back to a boil, stirring constantly, after it has boiled for 1 min. it is done and ready to use. Note: you can add more/less sugar if you like.
