Hunting for berries of the straw

Last weekend, Marc and I drove to a farm stand not too far from here to get strawberries. They weren't the greatest, so we decided we'd have to bite the bullet and make the trek out east to farm country, starting out in the middle of the night (okay, it was 8:30am, but for me that's close enough for a Saturday!) to be sure to beat the traffic.

Yes, Long Island still has farms. We stopped at two of them this morning, so Marc could pick berries.

That's right, we didn't just buy them from a farm stand. Marc picked them. No, I didn't help. I drove, but I didn't pick any. If I wanted to go pick berries in the dirt, I'd become a migrant farm worker, but Marc thinks this type of thing is fun. So I just bring my camera and see what's around while he plays in the fields.

So did I sit in the car and stare at the steering wheel?



Nope. At the first farm, I took some shots of the cornfield and the other fields, including where Marc was picking strawberries...


The corn, not yet as high as an elephant's eye but perhaps as high as Dodger dog's eye




Not sure what's growing here


Can you see Marc? He's in this photo, busily picking strawberries.


The checkout counter


Our intrepid hunter returns



After about an hour at the first farm, we hit the road and quickly found ourselves at yet another "pick your own" farm.


The second farm, with corn in the next field and watering in progress

Speaking of watering, I love the sight of those huge sprinklers (if that's what they even call them on that scale), especially when there's a huge row of them on a gigantic contraption that would get the whole place watered. We saw a number of those today as we drove through the East End's farms.


Once again, we can see our hero in this photo, bravely hunting strawberries.

And the best part of the farms was the one across from our second stop. Apparently, they raised some kind of giant dogs there. These make our dogs look tiny...


Look at the size of them! Must be some kind of great danes or something! :)

After we'd practically filled the car's trunk with strawberries, we went to get lunch. Being in the neighborhood anyhow, we went to a favorite "comfort food" place, The Modern Snack Bar. Opened in 1950 and barely changed since, there's nothing particularly modern about the place, but the food's worth the stop. When Knotty visited, we took him there. It would have been nice if he'd been with us today, but, alas, he's far away now.

Anyhow, it was a fun stop in a fun day. As I type this, Marc is working on making strawberry jam. I'm sure it will be fabulous!