Baby Blues

I have very vivid memories of picking fruit at the U-Pick farms in the East Bay when I was a teenager. My family and I would pick cherries, blueberries and strawberries for ourselves, but also to take back to Hawaii when we visited. One year we took a huge bucketful of cherries to my family, where we sat in the living room eating fruit until our fingers were stained red and our bellies ached.

Because our previous house had a number of flourishing garden beds (thanks to the previous owners), we simply stepped out back to pick blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. My garden beds in our current house aren't as established, so we got the girls in the car and headed to the Eastside for berry picking.

If you get a chance to hit a U-Pick farm near you, do it. Our little people felt a tremendous amount of pride eating what they picked and our oldest daughter now understands just how hard our farmers work.