Berry Pickin'

We love fresh berries. My kids can devour a whole container of strawberries in one sitting. They munch on blueberry and raspberries by the handfuls. We've talked a little about how berries are grown but I love hands-on education so we headed out to Bailey's Berry Patch to pick our own berries!

We started off with some ice cold blueberry lemonade. Now that's good stuff!



The berry patch is clean and well-maintained. There were some blackberries available earlier in the day but they were all gone by the time we arrived. So we headed over to the blueberries.





Not all of the blueberries were ripe. If they aren't ripe they still have a pinkish color to them. But all of the bushes had big ripe berries ready for picking. At first Rachel was just picking anything and putting it in her bucket.



Daddy spent some time with Rachel to teach her to only pick the blue ones. She figured it all out pretty quickly.





Sampling is allowed. Thank goodness too because we did our fair share of sampling during picking!





Nicholas was quite good at finding big bushes with lots of ripe blueberries. He often found the best bunches at the bottom of the bushes that hadn't been picked over by others before us.







Nicholas was really quick and working hard to be sure to be the first to fill his bucket. I was amazed that both children were so calm and quiet and completely focused on what they were doing the whole time we were out there. It's wonderful to see them so connected with nature and how wonderfully entranced they were.











A little more sampling...





Two hard-working and oh-so-cute berry pickers!



There is a big berry cleaning machine to get out any leaves and dirt from your bucket of berries. They don't clean the kid's buckets though since those most often contain lots of things other than berries including rocks and things that may damage their machine.



There are lots of wonderful preserves and butters for sale and of course we had to bring some home for ourselves.



Bailey's Berry Patch is located at 905 Crawford Road, Sadler, Tx 76264. You can contact them at (903) 564-6228 or info@TxBerry.com or just check out their website at www.txberry.com for more information. Berries are paid for by the bucket. Adults can fill a gallon bucket for $14 or kids can fill a quart bucket for $5. Bring plenty of sunscreen and drinks because you'll be working in the direct sun. But it's great family fun and you'll have some wonderful berries to enjoy for days later.

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