Strawberry Picking at Ingram Farm

 Our new favorite spot for picking strawberries, Ingram Farm in High Point.

We've gone strawberry picking every spring since Jack could walk. It has inadvertently become an annual tradition that signals the rapid approach of summer, much like a Memorial Day cook-out or the sudden twilight appearance of lightning bugs or finally giving up on reading log homework. 

This month we've been busy with all the usual frantic happenings of May and by the time we found a day to go, we were very sad to discover that our usual strawberry farm had run clean out of strawberries.  

Luckily, I heard about another strawberry farm not too far away and thank goodness I did.

The new place was charming, quaint and picturesque. The old strawberry farm had strawberries; the new strawberry farm has everything it takes to make a kid blissfully happy in one afternoon. I couldn't help but imagine the conversation that they must have had before opening the farm (please note: farmers in my imagination are deeply southern and refer to each other as "Maw" and "Paw") :

"Alright, y'all, Maw and I have decided that we wanna create somethin' special at the farm that will bring people to us, somethin' real kid-friendly because folks just love makin' memries with their youngins. What are some things that kids go crazy for?" 

"Kids love diggin' in the dirt!"

"How about animals? They go crazy over anything they can pet."

"They love takin' just one bite of food and then throwin' the rest on the ground!"

"Kids love dessert. They'll do anything for dessert!"

"And ridin' in dangerous vehicles without seatbelts!"

"Alright, Paw, I got it! We'll turn our land into a STRAWBERRY FARM! We'll drive everyone to the fields in a bumpy TRACTOR with NO SEATBELTS. They can pick and eat and throw all the strawberries they want and when the tractor brings them back in there will be GOATS they can feed and a Dessert Barn where we will sell homemade STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM! Folks'll come from miles around!"

And that's how Ingram's Strawberry Farm came to be. Probably. 

I feel kinda bad for the old place. It didn't even stand a chance.

I consider the fact that her outfit coordinated with the strawberry patch to be my biggest accomplishment of the day.

At any rate, at Ingram's they have strawberries, tractor rides, goats and ice cream, which can only mean that we will never go back to the regular ol' strawberry farm ever again. At one point Jack even declared, "I didn't know strawberries could be this cool!"

I want to squish him.

The afternoon was so strawberry-tastic that we wrote a limerick when we came back home. And by "we" I mean me. Jack wrote a poem too, but his did not even rhyme.

Strawberry Picking, by Mommy

There once was a family quite merry
Who spent the day picking strawberries,
They plunked and they picked
And they chomped and they licked,
And they all ended up red as cherries.

They brought back home all they could carry,
"Now what can we do?" the kids queried,
So they made jam, cream and cakes
And drank strawberry shakes,
Til they begged, "DON'T MAKE US EAT MORE STRAWBERRIES!!"

Monster, by Jack

It got on their faces.

Juicy red blood.

They looked like monsters.

They tried to scare their parents.

The parents thought it was a real monster.

They hid behind the big pillow.

I am both proud and disturbed.

Strawberries! Goats! Ice Cream! WHATEVER SHALL WE DO FIRST?!?

Henry and Elise did not write poems, but they have since made me read The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear so many times that they can now quote it, which kind of counts.  

The literary nerd in me secretly hopes that strawberry picking poems will be a new tradition they beg for each May, but regardless, we are ending the month in short sleeves with sun-kissed cheeks and a freezer full of strawberries, which can only mean that summer is as good as here.