Raspberry Belly
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 ]
Excellent strawberry and raspberry. But I seem to be less familiar with the name raspberry. It was very nice to see their garden. Hope you enjoyed it a lot.
I don't know where raspberries grow normally :)
Buttermilk strawberry, Raspberry and few almond and other nuts. Kind of like power drink haha. I used to remember that from the gym days. It's good to enjoy the summer days like this. I am sure your weekend is pretty fun :)
We really should go into the forest and pick some blueberries too. They are like a superfood!
An interesting weekend activity, they make you pick up instead selling directly. I think that's why the price is fair. What do you think to do with them? I would make some jam of them.
They also sell picked ones, but they are a bit more expensive, though cheaper than in the supermarkets. The price always depends on the year, with strawberries being very expensive this year.
Jam would be good, but we don't really eat it in this family, as my wife and daughter are gluten-free - not much bread! :D Likely just on porridge or in yoghurt for breakfast.
What a nice and beautiful family activity to end your well-deserved holidays on a high note.
Fruit picking also has its natural charm. The sweet flavour Of raspberries will remain engraved on the palate and in the mind of the Little Smallsteps. It is very difficult for her to forget such pleasant moments together with her parents.
Christmas is just around the corner. I hope that by that time they can have even more time to have fun and continue to enjoy the good things that life brings us.
Thank you dear @tarazkp for sharing your beautiful experiences and brightening up our lives with your anecdotes and your beautiful pictures
Christmas doesn't feel just around the corner today though - first day back at work sucks! :)
However, make an effort to enjoy what life has to offer now. "Soon" those vacation days will come again, as the law dictates.
My first memories of picking raspberries are in the 1980s. My parents and I did not pay anything to anyone and went to the forest, not far from the Pripyat River, where we picked wild raspberries. It was a little smaller than the garden one, very tasty. Now I do not see wild raspberries for sale. And garden raspberries are inexpensive with us, $ 1.5 per 1 liter.
The wild raspberries are rarer here, as are the wild strawberries - but the bilberries are awesome. We have strawberries (wild and garden) and raspberries (garden) at home, but not that many.
So cheap! I strawberries this year for up to 9€ a liter.
We live in different worlds :) We had strawberries for $1 per liter, 10 times cheaper. You should be getting 10 times more than me for a post with these prices :)
:D :D
What a wonderful day! I actually prefer the fresh frozen raspberries to the non frozen, I love the sour bit that they get in the freezer! Picking the fresh fruit is also an excellent activity to do with the kids, we go picking all the time and it’s a great way to spend a few hours, eat some fresh fruit snacks and be outside in the fresh air.
I think with the ridiculous prices these days, it’s not a shock that the place was packed. That’s happened to us as well, where the first day of blueberry season so many people showed up they closed it for the rest of the week to let the other berries ripen up. Good problems to have!
We freeze the berries as well so that we can enjoy them into the fall and winter. The less stuff you have to buy from the store for the kids the better I think!
It was funny - I didn't have time to eat before going other than a coffee and when we arrived there, I was contemplating grabbing something from the café, but decided to just eat off the bushes. I was full :D
I don't know if it is as noticeable there, but what was interesting was there were quite a few foreign families there. Some might have been tourists (because it is an experience), but I think most were relatively local. I suspect that it is a price thing.
I keep meaning to get a vacuum sealer. Do you have any experience?
What a wonderful way to end your vacation. You are right, they need to add the extra in for those people eat. My fat American ass would be eating half of what I pick. At least they would be good for me though.
We have a chest freezer too. Had it for several years now. It has moved from house to house while we were in the military and still have it all these years later. It has served us well.
My fat Australian ass did :) They are good though and I have to say, the berries in general are far better than anything I have had in Australia. I think it is because of the short, intense growing period.
The chest freezer is great. The only problem we have now is we forget we have stuff in there.
We do the same thing. We prepare stuff and put it away for later and then forget all about it.
What a nice idea!
A farm close to where we live issued the same (almost) initiative as they had too much plums on the trees and instead of throwing them away or let them rot on the trees, they asked for people to come and harvest them for free, giving in some kilograms and bringing home the rest with a nice dinner altogether.
I was realy tempted to go not just for the easy plums BUT for the idea of contributing with my work to the good of a local farm and getting to know other people like-minded.
Unfortunately a friend of Mary was approaching at the same time and I had to go and pick her up at the train station having dinner together so I could not do it but the next time....
It is a pity you couldn't go, but at least you know to keep your eye out in the future.
It is really good for Smallsteps (and kids in general) to take part in these activities, so they get a real sense of where food comes from, rather than the shops. Finland is pretty natural in this regard, so she gets to go berry picking on walks around the neighborhood :)
Raspberry craving
They are really good!!
Fruit picking can be fun :D We've only done it once, when a bunch of us from a homeschool group went up and did olives, which the family that ran that farm then pressed into olive oil for us and one of the group's parents went back later on to pick up and distribute at the next group meetup. The kids had fun and got to see what fruit picking by hand on a farm is like.
I've heard of picking machines but not sure how many are in use around here
4-8 weeks used to be standard holiday for us, but it was every couple of years. Might be again if we go again (it's home that I went to for that long and we haven't been since stupid panpanic).
Yay for a nice holiday :D
One of my brothers will be homeschooling his child and we were talking the other day about getting connected with groups for outings and for various gaps they might have in teaching support or something. Is it common?
8 weeks would be nice. Other than the stroke recovery period, I haven't had 8 weeks "free" since before I started school. That is kind of weird.
Yeh you'd normally try to find at least one homeschool group that you mesh with and that serves various purposes of parental support (parents gotta make friends too XD) and social/group development. There are some groups that might be social only but a lot will probably do some education support stuff. When mine were little we went to one that had craft activities and a different parent volunteer led activity for those that wanted to participate. In another one we went to more recently, there were classes set up for different age ranges that could be enrolled into and that had a more traditional "school" feel where they sat at desks and did worksheets, difference being there were short breaks between classes and you just enrolled in whatever you liked (you could also enrol social only in that group if you wanted).
Then youngest became a problem child and basically kept refusing to go because reasons so we're back to doing our own thing.
Excursions can be harder to organise for a group (been there done that, ergh I'm the worst person for this job) but there's a lot of benefits of being able to experience something fun with your friends and also group discounts and a lot of places have educational programs that can be accessed by homeschool groups with a minimum number. When I started organising group excursions there were a lot of places that couldn't cope with mixed age groups but other places were great and I did notice that things got slowly better over time.
There may be some people who may not have a lot of contact with the outside world because they're severely introverted, there's other issues or the parents are control freaks. I don't think I've met any of them but somehow that stereotype was the most common one for homeschooling for a while.
this is not counting kids who go through phases, all of my kids had a short period of time where they just didn't want to go out much and I had to practically force them on excursions because all of them loathed bookwork and absolutely refused to do it once they got to upper primary
There's a lot of online resources and a lot of groups will have a website (or at least a stupid Facebook presence). If your brother is on here as well throw him at Home Edders, there's a lot of young homeschooling parents on there with plenty of great ideas at the moment (and a couple of us with older kids with different ideas for older kids or in my case "this is an example of what your life could look like").
Congratulations, your post has been added to Pinmapple! 🎉🥳🍍
Did you know you have your own profile map?
And every post has their own map too!
Want to have your post on the map too?
What a marvelous way to end the vacation. I love picking berries, but I'm mostly a blueberry guy. All berries matter, but the seeds in rasp and black berries really get me good. I prefer the more tart berries kinda like gooseberries.
ENJOY!!