Strawberry Fields

There was no real need to go.

It was hot. The week had been long and hard because #kids and #colds. I would go to the grocery in just a few days.

But we went anyway.

We went and picked strawberries.

Every year when May-and-therefore-strawberry-season rolls around, I look forward to seeing the "Open" signs at Batey Farms in Murfreesboro. It's five minutes from my house--incredibly convenient--and I get all excited thinking about the beautiful time my children and I will have, laughing and making memories picking bright red berries in the shining sun.

But if you're a parent, you know it doesn't go like that.

It goes more like this:

"Does everyone have shoes? Sippy cup? Where's your sippy cup? Didn't you just...? Okay, okay, that's fine, we'll only be gone an hour, surely no one will dehydrate before then, let's just all get everyone in the car...wait, where are your trains? I don't know. Can it wait? No? Well, um, okay, well, no! It'll have to. Let's just get in the car. I'm so sorry you're crying, let's just...." Gets everyone in the car 15 minutes later. Drives to location. Gets everyone out. "Okay! Let's get on sunscreen! Wait, what? Your diaper? Sure, babe, I can change your diaper, just wait while I get your brother situated...Oh, you want to go potty? Well, um, it's just porta-potties here, babe, can you go in your diaper or just wait until we get home? Screams. Sorry, you've got to wait. We'll just get our baskets and run out and get some berries and then head right home. I know you're hungry...."

Doing anything with kids is a hassle. It just is. For that reason I had actually talked myself out of picking a couple of times earlier in the season. But today, we went. It was the end of the season, and I needed to get out of the house. Hassle it was. I packed everyone up, sunscreen and sippy cups in tow, and we went.

We were there, I guess, oh about an hour. Maybe 45 minutes. I forget how long it takes to fill a bucket, especially when you're looking under every leaf for the last gifts of the season while picking mulch out of your one-year-old-who-eats-everything's mouth, and looking for your keys every five minutes because your three-year old is prancing around and throwing them in the rows while munching berries.

Clearly the kids were having a blast. My daughter was getting a kick out of every new handful of berries I dropped in her basket. My son was in toddler heaven, with plenty of curiosities to handle while watching dozens of people around him.

As I picked berry upon juicy, jammy berry, I thought, "Why do this? If someone asked you, 'why do this'? What would you say? Why not just, you know, go to the grocery? Why bring out the kids? Why bother with the hassle?"

I wrote in my first entry about some of the things I think good food should be about, like community, relationships and connecting.

That means that in good food yes, there's hassle and fuss. Work.  Like farming. Like family. Like life. But in the end, after the hassle, the hardness, the work: joy.

As I watched my kids dance, crawl, and roll in the rows, I knew this is why I brought them: To experience a taste of community, relationship to the place they lived, connection to the earth and each other and the others around them, and to feel the joy when all of those things come together.