Pickin Wild Berries

Today I just had to get out of the house. With Bart gone, it is just too quiet. So I decided to go for a drive.

 My goal today was to find a "Berry" farm. I saw a little blerp on the news about a Berry Farm where you could pick your own berries. So I was gonna try it today.

 It was such a beautiful day and the drive was really nice. There was green everywhere, and it went on for miles.

 Here is what I was looking for - The Wagner Berry Farm. They are located in Spring Hill, TN. They opened up just a few years ago, and they offer 4 types of berries: Strawberries, Blackberries, Blueberries and Raspberries.

 This is one of the owners. He was my personal tour guide. He was really nice too. Him and his wife both work this "farm" part time. They also still have part time jobs, but eventually want to work it full time. There was one other lady that was there too - the same time I was, so he visited and gave us a tour. I thought this drum was a cool way to plant strawberries.

 They have quite a few acres. They have berries planted all over, and everything was nicely planted, labeled and organized.

 Even though they have strawberries, there are over 15 kinds! I had no idea. He let us sample some as we went along, so that we could make sure that we picked the kind that we would enjoy the most. I preferred the 1. Sweet Anns, 2. Chandlers, and 3. Charlies. They were the sweetest and not as firm as the others.

And let me tell ya, there is nothing like a fresh sweet strawberry right off of the bush. It was delicious!

 They had several rows of strawberries, and they had them all labeled with cute little signs like this. For instance, this is row 3 of the Sweet Anns. There would be like 8 rows of these.

 The black plastic keeps the rabbits from getting into the strawberry plants. He said that the rabbits don't like to get up on the plastic. Now, if a strawberry is hanging over the side, they will definitely eat those. As for other critters, he said that their dogs sleep all day, and then monitor the fields at night. I guess this system is working for them, because they still have plenty of fruit.

I didn't care for the Seascape strawberries as much. They were much more tart and were used more for making pies, etc. Yum - a fresh strawberry pie sounds great right about now. Anyway...

 The only berry that was available to be picked today were the strawberries. The other berries would be coming ripe in the next few weeks. More like June & July. They only have the berries available thru the summer, but can get fruit as late at October. Our guide said that the more sun that they have, the sweeter the strawberries would be. Since we have had so many clouds and rain, it has taken awhile for this crop to actually come to fruition.

 I want to bring back Bart, Brandon & Sky in a few more weeks so that they can come and pick some different berries. They give you your own little basket for you to pluck your fruit and put it in. Then they weigh it, and you pay per pound. At times they will have some "pre picked" fruit that you can buy, but they charge $1 more a pound. They also have jams and jellies for sale.

 So here is my loot for the day. They warned me that they had been pretty picked over today, but I managed to find enough for us to enjoy. Also, something I learned was that once you pick the strawberry, it won't ripen any more. So what you pluck is what you get. You should let a strawberry ripen completely to the tip before picking.

I had an enjoyable day picking the strawberries. I just wish that I had someone to share it with. Can't wait until the guys get a day off and I can bring them back here.

On the way home, I saw this raccoon that had been run over. I was told that there are wild raccoons here, but I haven't seen any so far. This is as close to it as I have come so far.