raspberries

I didn't go to the farmer's market today. It seems that just about any day of the week you can find a farmer's market in town, you just need to know where to look. Sort of like an illegal gambling ring. The Saturday market is bigger, and there's slightly more variety, but for the most part your selection from every stall is the same. Everyone has carrots, everyone has cucumbers, everyone has squash, etc, and for all about the same (very reasonable) price and about the same quality. It's not like other towns' markets where there's the bi-color corn guy and the organic lettuce guy, and the cheese empenadas woman, and the heirloom melon dude. The Saturday market hasn't been around all that long, so I'm hoping in future years there'll be more variety.
The upshot of all this is that there's not as much pressure to get out early on a Saturday to go to the market. Instead today I got out early to go raspberry picking. Which was awesome. The berry farm is probably the hardest place to get to in Eau Claire, I got lost coming and going, but it was gorgeous. I parked next to a barn and went in and talked to the elderly gentleman who gave me a spiel about how to pick the berries and sent me on my way. To get to the berry rows I walked through this absolutely gorgeous flower garden that really set the mood. I mean, no matter how many bugs or thorns there were (and there were), it all felt very peaceful and wondrous after walking through that garden. It was a nice outing.
I expected a little more of a price cut, seeing as how I'm doing the labor of picking, but it's actually the same price as what I got at the farmer's market last week. But they tasted just a little sweeter having picked them myself. Next week I might go back for blueberries. We'll see.
Anyway, I picked three pints (took me a little more than an hour, I was picking fall berries and they weren't quite there yet) and a really nice woman I was chatting with while we picked told me that I should lay them out on a cookie sheet and freeze them, then put them in a ziplock for the winter. Which is what I'm going to do, if I don't eat them all first. Could happen, they're really good.

On another note, did you know the fruit is spelled rasPberry? I never noticed that p hidden in there. Man.