Saturday morning rolls around, and Stefanie and I hit the road around 7:45 AM to go pick berries. Just outside of Mount Vernon there is a nice, quiet farm with a quaint store, ice cream stand and rows and rows of U-Pick your own fruit. Stefanie and I headed straight for the raspberries and had fun talking and laughing, taste testing and becoming one with the raspberry bushes. Next we hit up the strawberry rows. The smell of the berries was amazing and filled the air around us. Unfortunately a lot of the rows had been searched and picked over, but we persevered until we found ones to our liking. The real treasure of the morning was the blueberry bushes! We weren’t expecting to be able to pick them, but the branches were filled with yummy, plump and juicy blueberries!! The total damage….I mean find, was 11 lbs of raspberries, 5 lbs of strawberries and 3 lbs of blueberries! I think $40.00 for all of that was well worth it! Of course I was not looking forward to the cleaning and storing process, but I knew I could not procrastinate! Stefanie taught me a trick on spreading the berries on a cookie sheet and freezing them, then sticking them in a freezer bag, will help keep their shape and be amazing when adding them to muffins and breads. So I split up the process. Freeze parts of them individually and freeze in bulk for when I have time to make yummy jams and syrups! After approximately 8 hrs or so, I think I have the process complete. Of course the next process will be a whole lot tastier!