Gen always manages to find something fun and/or crazy for us to do whenever we visit, and she kept up her hit rate today with a visit to a farm. Not any farm, but a fully organic, ethical, hand-picked smallholding in one of the most expensive slices of real estate in California. That might explain the $13 entrance fee - I should suggest that to my Aunt and Uncle for their dairy farm in West Wales.
Anyway, it turned out to be money well spent. We piled into a tractor-drawn trailer in the scorching Orange County sun and were whisked off to the nearby fields. We toured about 30 acres of complementarily-planted and unsprayed lettuces, beans, broccolini, tomatoes, and many more. At each crop the tractor stopped (much to Frankie's annoyance - go non-gender-stereotyped girl!) and we were given samples straight from the soil.
Everything was delicious. Things had a sweetness that you just don't get after days of transport, and were sun-warmed rather than frozen to death in fridges. Perhaps it was psychosomatic, but eating something twenty seconds after it was picked tasted great. Our one-year-old quality tester was mightily impressed.
Finally it was on to the strawberries, where we stepped off the trailer with empty punnets in hand. You could pick enough berries to fill your box...and eat as many as you wanted as you went too! Gorging yourself on enough strawberries to get your full $13 value is no small task, let me tell you.
Ambitions of being a farm worker.
On the trailer.
Hannah has just asked Gen if she usually buys ethically.
Strawberry fields forever.
Trying to smoke a runner bean. These Californians!
Frankie, less than impressed with sugar snaps.
Crops lines.
Sadly they don't farm blue cheese dressing here.
James: suspicious.
Corny caption.
What's up doc?
One for the box, three for me...
Hints of vanilla and...um...strawberry.
A Frankie-sized tower of pickings.
Holland family on holiday.
Biting off more than she can chew?
And now the results. No. 1: organic, ethical, hand-picked, completely delicious strawberry margaritas.
No. 2: strawberry cheesecake. Yum.
