Strawberries

[Magicman]

Yup, the Ponchatoula, Louisiana Strawberries are starting to be available in our area:


We got a half flat for now which we divided and will get more later. 

[Magicman]

I have been slicing them into my morning cereal and tonight I decided to:



Yup, slice a couple into a bowl of Ice Cream.  My presentation was off because the IC ended up on top of the slices, so I sorta mixed it up and no one knows except us. 

[SwampDonkey]

Your dessert looks mighty tasty. 

Nothing beats a local strawberry. Winter strawberries we see up here in stores from a far are no good at all. No juice and no taste and half green and hard. 

I like Laurie McLellan's berries, the juice runs down your chin and the flavour....mmmm

[NewYankeeSawmill]

Industrious folks are grabbing trailers of them and heading north for profit!
Almost choked at what they wanted for a single quart basket... but then again, it was picked THAT morning and driven to me, guess there's a price to pay for that! 

[Magicman]

Our Ponchatoula, Louisiana Strawberries are famous here and a much awaited delight.  Ponchatoula is about 100 miles South of here.  Soon the fruit market will display it's Ponchatoula sign and we will have umbrella vendors on the roadsides.

Louisiana provides us with Crawfish as well is the Strawberries in the Spring. 

[SwampDonkey]

These are some of Laurie's berries.

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=757763463022499&set=a.478072330991615

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=748824823916363&set=a.478072330991615

I'm drooling. :D  They are hard to get because they sell out within an hr.

[JD Guy]

Our Ponchatoula, Louisiana Strawberries are famous here and a much awaited delight.  Ponchatoula is about 100 miles South of here.  Soon the fruit market will display it's Ponchatoula sign and we will have umbrella vendors on the roadsides.

Louisiana provides us with Crawfish as well is the Strawberries in the Spring. 

Can't think of anything better than a crawfish boil and strawberries and ice cream for dessert. Drooling 🤤

[Magicman]

Add Gumbo and it's no wonder that "Louisiana Coonasses" have a well earned reputation for good cooking/eating.

[JD Guy]

Add Gumbo and it's no wonder that "Louisiana Coonasses" have a well earned reputation for good cooking/eating.

I may have said this before but among other places we lived in both Shreveport and Mandeville LA about 40 years ago😁. I sure do miss all of the seafood and Cajun food we enjoyed and cooked while there. Just can't find anything like it here in upstate SC. We can make some outstanding smoked meats though!

[SwampDonkey]

What I miss here is wild caught Atlantic salmon with rod and reel. If you've ate one of those you wouldn't touch that farm raised fish with a 50 foot pole. 

[thecfarm]

Have to wait for July for the strawberries here.
I leave about 15 minutes from a you pick place.

[Southside]

Well the snow does  have to melt first. 

[SwampDonkey]

With floating fabric you can get strawberries in early June, late May some springs. Laurie starts picking in late June in her berries, no fabric. One of those pictures on her FB site was the end of June.

[Stephen1]

We now get hot house strawberries grown in Ontario, very similar price to what the send from California, that are mostly white, with a red outer ,but way better tasting. They are red all the way through!

[SwampDonkey]

For a brief time they used to send some decent ones up from Florida in the winter. I haven't seen one in years. Mother bought some from California the other day, I noticed them out in the yard on the ground yesterday morning. The crows have never touched them. That outta tell ya something. :D

[Rhodemont]

While the kids were very young we used to go pick strawberries in the spring at a local farm.  One year I decided why not grow strawberries in our garden.  Did not work out too well two years trying.  We go pick at the farm.  Gosh they are good!

[Jeff]

I'm excited for this year as my patch I planted last year grew so well. Cant wait to see what they do.

[Old Greenhorn]

.... The crows have never touched them. That outta tell ya something. :D

It tells me your crows aren't very smart.

[SwampDonkey]

Well at least one wasn't, the old crow that bought them, then tossed them.

[SwampDonkey]

Used to grow some here myself. Dad grew some to sell years ago, could sell them as fast as he could pick them. Mostly folks from Maine buying them. One year I thinned mine out and bound them into bunches, put them in bags, and froze them in the old freezer we had in the basement. They were there 3 years. I finally remembered about them, planted them one spring and they grew just fine. A number of years ago I decided I like berries where I can stand and pick them. A raspberry patch, I can pick from all day long. That's what I've been growing for years. Those and grapes. I'm still drinking juice from all the raspberries and grapes, plus 2 years worth of jam and jelly to go through. Been eating jam every day, have hardly made a dent. I still have 8 bottles of juice, including one bottle of rhubarb juice left. Rhubarb is probably my favorite juice, and it has way less sugar than soda pop. I like to taste the fruit, not sugar.  Raspberry juice is my next favorite. Raspberries make a lot of juice. We had over 60 quarts of raspberries last summer from 3 - 12 foot rows.

[Rhodemont]

Our rhubarb is poking through.  Wont be long and some pie!!!!!

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Lynn your ice cream looks delicious.    We have a strawberry patch as well but the last few seasons were so wet we had to fight the slugs for every berry we picked.
I agree with Rhodemont. Rhubarb pie is a favorite but rhubarb and apple or rhubarb and strawberry pie even tastier.

[Mooseherder]

These were from Goughan Berry Farm in between Caribou and Fort Fairfield, Me last summer.  I said that is the best Strawberry I ever had, then I ate another and said the same thing.

[SwampDonkey]

That fellow on the top of the hill outside of the Fort, on the way to Presque Isle, is a relative of my mother, if he's alive now. A bunch of spruce around it. Haven't been by there in years, probably 13 anyway. I come from the other end and I have not been up to Presque Isle more than twice in 4 years now.   On the Fort road out side of Perth-Andover used to be Everett's berries. Everyone near there in Maine and Perth Andover area used to flock in there for berries. Long gone now. A lot of berry farms are long gone.

[Mooseherder]

I know they've had a hard time getting people to work the last few years and scaled back to what they could manage.
There's a big blueberry farm down the road along the river also.