Peaches and Blueberries!

Eric, Lucas and I went and picked our own peaches and blueberries at Bush N Vine Farm in York, SC last weekend. Lucas was a surprisingly good helper. We told him just to get the big blue berries and he actually did! At one point I turned around to tell him to stop throwing blueberries out of our bucket, but he was actually getting rid of some reddish ones Eric had picked too soon.

It was a fun way to spend the afternoon, and we took home a half gallon of blueberries and a half bushel of peaches for just $18!  To put that into perspective, the blueberries were $7 a half gallon, while their pre-picked berries were $16 a half gallon. Big difference! I never liked blueberries because I thought the skin was too tough and tasted gross.... then I had one of these. What a difference it makes when they haven't been shipped and sitting in a grocery store!

Besides snacking on some and sharing some with friends and neighbors, we canned the peaches and made a quart of blueberry syrup.  We gave away quite a few peaches, but we were still able to can 10 pints and 2 quarts.  Both making the syrup and canning the peaches were surprisingly easy!  I got my blueberry syrup recipe from SimpleBites.com. It turned out every bit as delicious as the article promises, and it keeps in the fridge for up to 6 months.

Do you have yummy recipes for canned peaches? Please share! Now that we have so much, I'm going to need the help!

It's Strawberry Season!

One of the problems that Eric and I have run into with shopping at farmers markets is that too much tends to go to waste. The fruits and veggies go bad before we can eat them all. I don't know why I haven't thought of it before, but as I was browsing PickYourOwn.org, I found our answer: Freezing! I'm way too lazy at the moment to try to figure out canning (though we will try that out someday), plus we would have to buy all the equipment. Freezing is the perfect, simple solution.

Today Lucas and I went to the Hall Family Farm in Charlotte to get strawberries. I'm making my Grandma Pat's version of Strawberry Shortcake for Easter brunch, plus I wanted to try my hand at freezing my all-time favorite fruit. With the weird weather we've been having, the strawberries are ripening quickly so I was able to buy a 10lb pre-picked flat for $25 (found that deal on their Facebook page). It was rainy and wet anyways, so picking them myself whilst chasing a two-year-old out of mud puddles was out of the question.

Instead, we checked out the chickens.

Lots of berries to pick! We'll definitely go back when it's nicer outside!

Really sweet and not a bad one in the box! Here's what we went home with:

Resisting the temptation to eat a ton now, I spent the afternoon getting the strawberries ready to freeze or be turned into Strawberry Shortcake. It's super easy. First your wash them:

Then you let them sit in the strainer for 10 minutes:

Next, cut the tops off the strawberries and put them in pans that will fit in your freezer. Leave them in there over night, or at least long enough to freeze.

That's where I'm at now... waiting for them to freeze so I can bag them up in Ziplocs and leave them in the freezer. Amazing strawberries from the farm all year long!

Here are a ton of ways to use up your strawberries: An entire website devoted to strawberries!

I definitely want to try out the strawberry bread, and the strawberry soup.

Orange Strawberry Jupiters

What You Need:
3 cups of fresh squeezed orange juice
1 cup fresh strawberries
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup dry powdered milk (Eric and I want to try it with Vanilla yogurt instead too...)
10 ice cubes

Put it all in the blender and blend until the ice is crushed. Easy! Makes 3-4 servings.


This is a great way to use up your fruit, and it's a healthy snack or dessert. When we made them last night we didn't have enough oranges so we threw two apples in the juicer to make up the difference. Don't expect a smoothie... these are more like thick, fancy juice.