Fruit picking

We have all been enjoying the summer fruits now that they have eventually ripened, and the appearance of raspberries, blueberries and even still strawberries have lead to many puddings consisting of fruit, crushed meringue and ice cream.

So this weekend, on a typically british saturday morning (ie drizzle), we went raspberry-ing at a local pick-your-own. Nathaniel was rather taken by the idea, especially when he discovered that it combined his favourite activities of going in the car, wearing wellies and eating raspberries. He was even happier when he discovered that there was a basket to carry!





We were totally convinced by the idea when we tasted our first raspberry and recalled that pick-your-own fruit resembles in no way the punnets that you buy at the supermarket. It was delicious!

We were heading back to the "shed" to pay for our fruit when we saw the magic word: broad beans. So we headed back out past the amazing cylindrical ripening blackberries and past the red and black currants (very tempting), to the broad beans. None of us really knew what a broad bean plant looked like (how city are we?!), so we had great fun chosing and harvesting our bean pods. Nathaniel found it rather hard to detach the pod from the plant, but enjoyed shelling the beans and putting them in the bag. He was noticably confused when I insisted that he bagged the pod as well as the beans. The business case for paying for the heavy bit that you don't eat was rather lost on him!



That afternoon we ate a lot of raspberries and had fun freezing them so that we'll have a ready supply for months!