Strawberries

Email from Mary - February 17, 2022

Mother made hundreds of jars of jams and jellies over the years.  It was a time consuming, arduous and expensive project.  Cost savings and increased quality meant 'you pick' berries, Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and eventually blueberries. *  Mother did not drive, and the berry fields were usually in Woodinville.

Jim was the designated driver; he was 16-18 years old.  Jim, mother and a child or two were in the front seat.  Those were the days of Buicks with floor clutch and brakes etc., no central console in the front seat with room for more ** The backseat held four or five Farley children.  The trunk had empty boxes.

We crawled around on our hands and knees picking strawberries and eating the ones that looked particularly tasty until we had 50 or 60 pounds of strawberries and were exhausted, and mother didn't want to deal with anymore. There was always a comment about the field owner weighing us before and after the harvesting, but they were usually very happy with us because we picked the rows clean.  If we skipped large areas of the row or left a lot of berries on the plants, they needed to be repicked. It was much more labor intensive for the farmer to do the clean up because other u pickers wanted areas where the berries were abundant.  (Ask Candy about that problem).  Also, we did not have rotten berry fights, that entailed pelting other pickers with the squishy rotten fruit.   The farmers often invited us back.

We reassembled in the car with boxes of strawberries on our laps.  The boxes had been carefully filled to avoid bruising the berries and were large enough to cover our laps.  Jim arranged the boxes so they would not spill.  There may have been one or two boxes on the floor.   Then he climbed in behind the driver's seat, with Strawberry juice smearing his face and drove us home.   The car was filled with giggling children who occasionally spied a particularly plump berry that needed to be tasted. Mother would occasionally caution us that if we ate too many berries there would be less jam. 

The car smelled of Strawberries it was a heady sensation.

Bowls of strawberries with cream for dessert were available for several days.  Rows of Strawberry jam on the shelves of the pantry in the basement rewarded us all year long.   Later receipts came out for frozen jam that was stored in the freezer in the basement that Dad bought mother.  We did not own a freezer for many years.  Dad rented a freezer locker in the local butcher's shop for many years.

* More on these berry picking stories later.

**Large one-piece cushion front seats allowed SOS curve driving at certain speeds " Slide over Sweetheart".  I am sure my brothers never tried. There was also a COD maneuver,  "Come Over Darling", again on curves. What the present generation is missing.