Strawberry Picking

Eliel and Mommy picking strawberries

This past Friday, Eliel and I went strawberry picking at Stade's Farm in McHenry.  We always go with my friend Chrissy and her two girls, Autumn and Emma.  I started going with Chrissy a few years back when Emma was born and now she's 4!

We really like going to Stade's because it's everything you need and none of the stuff you don't.  They're a great family run farm.  They even put hay down in between the crops so they kids don't get muddy after a rain.  We've only gone there for strawberry picking but they also have pumpkin picking in the fall with a huge harvest festival.  I also saw that they are starting u-pick tomatoes and raspberries soon! Yum!

I knew Eliel would enjoy strawberry picking because he loves strawberries so much.  Our first task was to get him to realize that we keep the strawberries in the buckets.  He had a blast dumping my bucket for the first ten minutes or so.  He also thought it was quite funny to dump my bucket into his!  Silly little guy.

Mmmmmm!!!

Once he got the hang of it, he really enjoyed hunting for the red strawberries.  He would walk down a row with me, find a red strawberry and sign 'help'.  Autumn and Emma thought it was weird that Eliel wasn't eating any of the strawberries.  I told the girls that I hadn't shown Eliel he could eat them yet for good reason.  Once I did, strawberry picking was over and it was all about eating.  He had strawberry juice everywhere!  He would have stayed and ate for another hour had Autumn and Emma not wanted to go and eat lunch. as you can see in the picture on the left, there was no shortage of strawberry juice on this little man.

We had so much fun!  I can't wait to take him to Michigan to go blueberry and blackberry picking at the end of July!

#strawberrypicking