Strawberries!

We drove up to Barthel Fruit Farm early one Saturday in mid-June to pick strawberries with Jonah for the first time. While we have been regular visitors to Barthel's, we did not pick last year, as Grandma Gregg's strawberry patch was quite abundant and she was able to provide us with an incredible supply of berries at no cost to us.

Thus, we were excited about sharing the picking (but not jam-making) experience with Jonah, giving him a lesson in what to look for on the drive to the patch. "What color berries do we want to pick?" "Red." "That's right. Don't pick the white ones." As we pulled into the patch, we noticed all sorts of things that are super-interesting to nearly-two-year old boys, namely a couple of tractors, a couple of convertible cars, and moving-type trucks from which employees distributed baskets for picking. To his credit, Jonah did take initial interest in the berries.

Surveying the situation.

Sampling a berry. This tastes pretty yummy!

It turns out that our lesson in picking strawberries was really unnecessary. While he picked one strawberry right away, Jonah quickly figured out that it was much more efficient to swipe them from the baskets into which mommy and daddy were picking. One smart boy he is! He wasn't terribly secretive about it, however, as he did ask us to remove the stems from them for him.

Stealing a berry from the box.

After a bit, however, Jonah lost interest in eating the berries as well. I can't blame him: we were picking a fair number of berries so that we could make up several batches of jam. And the two-year old attention span is notoriously short. He entertained himself for a while climbing up onto our backs while we were down on the ground picking, and then he started running up and down the field, between the rows.

Climbing on mommy's back while she picks.

Running off down the row.

After a while, we determined that it would be much more effective for one of us to continue picking berries while the other entertained Jonah. Ben took him to see the various aforementioned vehicles and they had a great time while I finished picking.

Look at all of these yummy berries!

We look forward to more strawberry picking in years to come; hopefully Jonah will be a bit more "help" next year!