Strawberries are announcing themselves in the fields right now, so after work I got down to a white T-shirt and drove out to the farm to begin the gathering. A swine made some percussive noises at me as I walked out to the strawberry patch. Then an ignoble fly started to ram me in the head over and over again, so I jogged the rest of the way through the hollow, thinking: how lucky am I to live in an area where there is a thing called a 'hollow' through which to run, even if the running is the result of aggressive flies. I like using the word hollow because it makes me feel like I'm writing from within a Van Morrison song. My heart was thumping, etc.Anyway, here are some minor thoughts on how to approach picking 'strewn berries':
- Look for the thickest clumps of plants. Big dudes hide in the deep, dark.
- Walk past plants dotted with smaller berries. (Actually, they're technically not berries at all, but stamens.) I have noticed that small strawberries hang out near other small strawberries, and big ones near big ones.
- Follow the bugs. Though strawberries self-pollinate, insects can also cross-pollinate them, which has been shown to produce bigger strawberries.
- Pick with your legs, not your back.
- To pick, you must put your arm into the unknown. Don't just reach for what you see -- reach for what you can't see. Be aspirational.
- Should the kneeling and hunching wear you out and tempt you to complain, consider that workers in Watsonville, CA pick strawberries ALL DAY during harvesting times.
- Don't count on strawberries to ripen after they're picked. They don't work the same way as avocados, bananas, and mangoes.
- ALWAYS eat the best few you find right there in the field, dust and all. Make a sweet red mess in your mouth.