Pick-Your-Own Day

On Saturday, we took a ride to Barden's Family Orchard.  It's a family-run farm that's just up the street from us.  We've been purchasing their delicious veggies at the farmer's market but this is the first opportunity we had to actually visit the farm itself (they don't open the stand till August).

They were doing something unique this year--Pick Your Own Cherry Tomatoes.  I've never seen that before and they claim to be one of the only farms doing it, so we just had to try it out.

All I can say is WOW...what a great idea.  And now, I know why people who like fresh tomatoes love cherry tomatoes so much.  Those yellow ones are literally like eating a piece of fruit (yes, I'm aware that tomatoes are botanically a fruit).  They're candy-sweet and I'm thinking they'd make a great snack dried--if we don't eat them all before I can get them into the dryer.

We also picked a few raspberries and blackberries.

The blackberries were probably the biggest I've ever seen!

We didn't pick nearly as many as I would have liked or as many as I did last year.  Unfortunately, this particular farm was charging supermarket prices for their berries--not sure why.  I'm going to call the farm I usually visit and see if they have a better price.  I'd really like to make a few jars of raspberry jam.  It was one of my favorites last year and it makes a great raspberry vinaigrette in the dead of winter.

They were doing pick-your-own peaches but only white peaches.  Their yellow ones weren't ready yet.  Their white peaches were delicious--sugary with an almost coconut/tropical flavor, but I want to do jam and canned peaches and something about white jam just didn't seem right to me.  We ended-up stopping at another local farm that did have its yellow peaches ready.  Must have been a different variety.

$15 for a peck basket is not bad.  I'll be working hard to can these and make some jam in the next couple of days.  Can't wait!

Have you done any pick-your-own trips yet?