Southern Belle Farms

We drove down to McDonough yesterday to Southern Belle Farms to go berry picking. It was a little over an hour drive, but totally worth it.  It was a beautiful day and very pleasant out.

 We started out by picking strawberries. We grabbed two buckets, one for me and one for Stella, of course and headed down the lane. 

One of my favs!

Work those muscles!

She was very content for a good bit, but then she wanted up. And down. And up again. And to eat all the berries. She was also fussy because I'd left her water in the car. I think she was also confused as to why she couldn't eat the berries. She's used to immediately choking down in our garden. So I threw her on my back, handed her a couple of hip dusted and blown off strawberries and kept picking. This was not the easiest task, but luckily I had about 2/3 of the basket full. 

As I was heading up to pay for a full gallon bucket of strawberries, I see people with full buckets of blackberries (my favorite) walking up. They'd just opened that field yesterday. We walked over to the rows and rows of HUGE, thornless bushes and got to picking. This was way easier since no bending was involved. I picked a full bucket in half the time.  We also got a bucket of sweet Georgia peaches. They weren't from Thai farm since their variety wasn't ready yet, but they did come from South Georgia. 

We headed up this lane to the big barn to get some homemade peach ice cream. 

We ordered a water, a hamburger (the only thing I don't recommend) and a cup of peach ice cream. We sat on a picnic table and watched other kids jump on a "bouncy pillow". It's essentially a ground level trampoline. I really wanted to try it, but I figured Stella would be too small and it was $3. I definitely plan on going back so we can try it then. 

Later, while enjoying our ice cream, we walked around checking out the farm.

We saw goats and the cutest baby kid, a Mama moo cow and her baby bull, two twin little lambs, chickens (who pecked at Stella's fingers), donkies, some other type of hens, and bunnies. 

We ended up being at the farm for three hours. There was so much to see. A lovely breeze also extended our day. 

As you can see, the blackberries are gigantic. Some were bigger than the strawberries.  Our fence here at home is covered in the same blackberries but ours aren't ripe yet. I figured if we drove an hour, we might as well make it worth our time. I froze roughly three quarts of blackberries and two quarts of strawberries. 

We enjoyed the berries for dessert last night and I put them in my yogurt this morning. 

Stella had her first fresh Georgia peach this afternoon. It wasn't ripe enough for her to bite into, so I cut off chunks, but she really liked it. I can't wait to give her a whole one and see her attack it like the plum last week. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with all of the peaches. They'll be ready to work with on Thursday I imagine. 

The strawberries are almost done and soon they'll have blueberries. I'd love to go back and pick a bucket to freeze for our pancakes and such. 

Stella loves fruit and especially berries. We have blue, black and strawberries in our yard, but obviously not on this scale.  I love that she is already learning where some of her food comes from.