Strawberries! Strawberries! Strawberries!

Ever wonder why strawberries are so dang expensive? They're a lot of work folks. We have about 1/2 an acre planted out to strawberries. which is about 30 rows that are 200 feet long and 5 feet across. I'm not good at math, but I can tell you that's a lot! They also take about 8 months before they bear fruit. That is a lot of time to keep weeds out of them...Plus, they're a pain to plant and send out runners that need to be clipped or rooted. They're lucky they're delicious.

We plant the berries mostly for U-Pick. It's such a heartwarming thing when families come out stringing toddlers along, parents teaching kids small things about how food grows like, "Do you see those? They're onions! Onions grow underground." The children oohed and awed. It was garlic they were looking at, but I am sure no one will be scared to learn onions are sort of a half-on half-under the ground sort of thing.

I say this not to poke fun, but to point out that people just rarely see what food looks like growing. I am no exception. I just learned last summer while growing potatoes just how on earth they do it! Did you know potatoes flowered? They make a "fruit" that has seeds? Totally blew my mind. But, that's our modern lives. Veggies and fruit come picked, cleaned and packed for us. We just never learned.

Our U-Pick is really a win-win. We get to offer that rare experience of coming on a real, working family farm to our customers. They get to come and show their families where food comes from. Food literacy is such an underrated concept, and we're only too happy to be a public classroom. Plus, we get to grow berries, and sell them, all without picking. Which makes me happier than you'll ever know- it takes quite a long time to pick enough berries to even think of selling. I personally think the pink-stained faces of toddlers speak for themselves how much fun it is when it's not your job to pick berries.

We try to set up the farm to make it easy on customers to find their buckets and get them filled. Our farmstand has buckets, baskets, a scale, and instructions to help them along. We also put up signs on the farm to help customers orient themselves. I got the privilege this year of painting them!

Here are the ones that will be staked in the road to get people oriented towards the patch.

Sometimes, words aren't needed. The deliciousness speaks for itself.

This large one will be stuck to a trellis and stand post at the berry patch.

Here is the first flush I had to pick myself before the rain came. If ripe berries sit in the rain, they rot within hours. I picked 10 gallon buckets in a few hours...I later cut their tops off, vacuum sealed them and froze them. There will be jam in your future.

If you want to come join the magical fun of U-Pick, come by! We'll have strawberries until June, apricots next month sometime, and black berries in early summer! Just Google directions to Pacific Star Gardens in Woodland and look for the red-roofed farm-stand!

This week's recipe is in honor of the berry-fest: Strawberry Soda! Never made soda before? Never fear, it's super simple. This recipe comes from one of my new favorite books, True Brews by: Emma Christensen. If you've ever wondered about making your own wine, beer, kombucha, mead, or even sake- this is a must have! The recipe is as follows:

Strawberry Soda-

• 2lbs Strawberries
• 1/4 C Lemon Juice
• 1 C water, plus extra to fill bottle
• Pinch of salt
• 1/8 tsp dry champagne yeast

Chop the tops off the berries, and pulse in a food processor for a few spins. Bring water to a light boil and dissolve sugar and salt. Add this plus the lemon juice to the berries and let sit for 10 minutes. This is called macerating. Look, you've done something fancy. Really, you're just encouraging the natural fruit juices to come out to join the soda party.

Strain this muck through a sieve, mashing the pulp against the sides to get all the good stuff out into a bowl. Probably a good idea to wear an apron.  Take this juice and pour it into a clean two liter plastic bottle, or glass swing top jar if you're brave and vigilant*. Add yeast and cap it off. Now do the hokey-pokey and shake that all about.

Leave it out on the counter for 12-48 hours until it carbonates. Longer in the winter, shorter in the summer. With a plastic bottle, you'll know it's ready when it feels firm to squeeze it. With a glass swing-top, you'll know by it's loud pop when you release the seal to "burp" it every six or so hours.

When it's carbonated to taste, put it in the fridge for up to two weeks. Enjoy straight, or with a shot of your favorite fermented spirit.

*Glass must be babysat when carbonating. If you forget to burp it- taking the swing-top seal out to let some gas out, it WILL EXPLODE. NO, SERIOUSLY THERE WILL BE BROKEN GLASS AND SUGAR SYRUP EVERYWHERE. Speaking from experience, surely. Personally, it's the only way I do things though, not down with BPA.