It comes as no surprise, but I absolutely love picking berries! We went with a couple of friends down to Johnson’s Farm in Hobart, Indian a couple weeks ago and were quite please with the delicious selection of fruits and veggies available to pick.
We chose to head over to Johnson’s Farm because it seemed to have a promising selection of produce to hand pick in mid-July and it was only about an hour from Chicago. Even if we only got to pick Blueberries it would have been a great pick, but we came home with so much more!
We started off with the Blueberries. There were 4 varieties of varieties growing on Johnson’s Farm, we favored the Dukes and the Reka Berries the best, so most of our haul was a mix between the two. Both were seemingly perfect, not too sweet, not too tart and obviously very fresh, so they were not mushy either.
One of the best part about picking fruit right from the source is that you get to see exactly how they grow. You get to select from berries at different stages, so you can choose only the best and most ripe berries around- and there are so many to pick from! I love to pluck the Blueberry and see the cute flower shaped base on the stem left behind.
I’m not sure how long we were actually picking blueberries, but we ended up with a 4.5 pound bucket of them. That’s a lot of Blueberries. We had enough to share with family & friends, and plenty to enjoy for ourselves for over a week! We didn’t let any of them go to waste.
The next section we hit was the Strawberry patch. This was a nice surprise, I really wanted to pick strawberries this year, but I wasn’t counting on it because it was slightly past the typical Strawberry picking season. If we had gone a week later we would have probably missed out on these beauties. I was totally thrilled that they were still growing and we were able to pick a ton of strawberries after all.
When it comes to produce, I have a lot of “favorites,” and strawberries are definitely on that list. Most Strawberries are tasty, but sometimes when you buy them at the store, they’re not all amazing, often times you’ll get a couple of sour ones that are white or a little underripe. These Strawberries though, I must say that they were without a doubt some of the most delicious strawberries we have ever had. Super sweet, juicy, and bright red on the inside- perfection.
The strawberries were sold by the bucket, so of course we went home with a full bucket. We didn’t weigh them, but it was probably 4-5 pounds worth. We had to eat them in the following few days because they were picked at the perfect ripeness, but that was no problem at all. We shared them with friends and took credit for the fact that they were so good- but all we really did was pick them.
The Berries were definitely the highlight of the day, but this farm had a ton of vegetables to pick too! We took home a Zucchini, a Cucumber, and a handful of Pickles. They were also growing many types of Peppers, Tomatoes, Cauliflower, Kale, Cabbage, Broccoli, and more.
The last berry of the day was the Raspberry! Possibly the most interesting of the bunch, but equally as delicious as the other berries. The Raspberries were just ready to be picked, so there wasn’t a million red berries everywhere, but there was more than enough. It was nice to be there at the beginning of the harvesting season because they were still flowering and they have hardly been picked at all yet.
We ended up with two pints full of brand new ripe Raspberries. This was a perfect way to end our day at the U-Pick farm. By the end of the hot and sunny day I was all tuckered out from all of the excitement. We spent about 25$ on over 15 pounds of freshly picked food and it was well worth it! Looking forward to visiting another farm sometime soon!
If you’re interested in visiting this U-Pick Farm, you can find out more about them here:
What are your favorite farms to visit? There are so many farms in the midwest it’s hard to know which to pick!
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