Strawberries

Talking about strawberries brought back memories of the Findlay's 50th wedding anniversary. She wanted to serve strawberries and angel food cake for dessert, so she took us all out picking strawberrries. ( That is Father, me, David and both Amber and Loren) She was not well by then, and looked unwell, so the people at the strawberry farm brought out a lawn chair and umbrella and she sat at the end of the rows and provided direction to those of us picking. We picked a big( read big) picnic cooler full of them. Now we had driven from the lake to the farm north of Hadashville, picked all of these strawberries, and then driven back to the lake. Then they had to be processed for the freezer, because the party wasn't until about 2 months later. So at about 3:00, she and I sat down to process the berries. In the end we had two five gallon pails of strawberries. I was so tired I wept. She was convinced that we needed that much to feed everyone who would be at the dinner. The kicker came when David and I had to transport the strawberries to the dinner--in the trunk of our car. One of the pails fell over and half of the strawberries ended up in the trunk of the car. We stopped in a parking area and cleaned them out through the hole where the spare tire usually sat. We took the other pail into the dinner and everyone had lots of strawberries, and Mother never knew the difference. BUT since then, I refuse to clean more than about 5 baskets of strawberries at any one time. Even though we drive out to Portage to pick them, I would rather go twice than have to clean more than 5 baskets.