Berry Pickin'

Saturday we got up and visited the Linvilla Orchard in Media, Pa. It's about 20 minutes from our house. Our neighbor had mentioned the orchard and suggested we check it out. So Saturday we got up, Joe made a quick mini breakfast to go and we were off. I had ulterior motives for the visit, you see Media actually has a starbucks so I made Joe promise to stop so I could pick up my lovely vente iced green tea :) He did, he is a good husband (Let's just say he didn't have a huge smile on his face and he waited in the car--but he loves me!!) So we arrived at the Orchard and it was totally overpopulated...we are not used to doing things on the weekends when everyone is out and about. Linvilla was having a Raspberry festival and they had a little area where they had face painting, a stage, minnie and mickey were there posing for pics (I'm not sure how they are related, but ok) and pony rides. It seemed that the set price for everything was $6...of course Hazel wanted to ride...so we paid the fee and off she went....

So after the pony ride we decided to go strawberry & raspberry picking. The orchard offers hay rides pulled by a tractor and drops you off at the raspberry section first....

For some reason when Hazel got on the hay ride, she thought, "hmmm course hay, I wanna run my toes through it" and she tried to take off her shoes....but we stopped her. I guess with fruit pickin' and hay ridin' really brought out the hillbilly in her.

So FYI, raspberry picking is not as easy as it sounds. I thought you would just walk through and see plump juicy beautiful berries ready to be picked. However we discovered that you actually have to work.

All of the obvious fruit on the outside of the bushes were of course picked so you have to hunch down and move leaves in order to find the fruit. Joe and I got really into it, sort of like we were on some sort of treasure hunt...Oh the joy we felt when we moved a bunch of leaves only to see the "perfect" raspberry eagerly waiting for us to pick it!

We dropped that perfect raspberry into our little bucket after carefully and intently searching for it...only to have Hazel eat the "fruit" of our labor. Yes, we had to guard our precious fruit from Hazel because she kept eating them...

We hopped on the hay mobile and tried our luck at strawberry picking. It was a little bit easier than the raspberries but it was so frustrating because you would see the perfect red, juicy, delicious strawberry and would pick it, only to find a hole in it where something else got a hold of it's tasty goodness.

Once you pick your fruit then you take it to be weighed and you pay for it by the pound. Joe said he saw this family just "grubbin" (as he put it) on strawberries while he was picking...I guess they didn't get the memo about paying by the pound. We had alot of fun. Here is the "fruit" (or berries) of our labor....

It was hot, oh boy was it hot. I was kind of worried about Jade being out in fields with all of that direct sunlight, but she had her little hat and was her cheerful little self.

We were all so worn out from the pickin' and sun...and REALLY hungry so we were happy to hop on the hay ride and head back. Hazel was seriously trying to eat the strawberries, we let her eat a couple. Here are some pics of us on the way back...

Linvilla has a really awesome market with produce, honey, baked goods, and tons of other stuff. We bought two tomato plants, an eggplant plant, chili plants, and a Thai basil plant. When we got home we worked on our little garden and planted them. We hope they grow!!! Wish us luck...















So that was our Saturday. We were so exhausted at the end of the day but had so much fun. We are happy to be finding cool stuff to do while we are here in PA. We miss everyone and hope you guys enjoy the photos. You are all in our prayers and we miss and love everyone so much!!!





God Bless!!!





Mon