This past weekend I went down to Pescadero to the Coastways Ranch U-pick with two of my co-workers and my parents. We drove about an hour and a half along the coast to these beautiful strawberry patches. We walked up to the guy (who wasn’t very enthusiastic) and grabbed our boxes to start picking! It was extremely fun and it wasn’t super hot which made it that much more enjoyable.

Here’s a picture of the fields before we started picking.

My first ever fresh picked strawberry! The guy told us to pick the really red ones since those would be the ripest. There were a bunch of red ones but sometimes they were too squishy or not ripe enough yet. I picked the really firm ones.

After that first one I went on a picking frenzy. I just kept walking through the fields looking for nice red ripe strawberries to pick. Gradually, my box started getting filled and even got a little heavier too. My parents were picking for their own box next to me and my co-workers were down the field a little bit.

Here’s a picture of my finally full box of strawberries! I think it only took about an hour and a half. It was kind of like a scavenger hunt. You’re pretty much just searching for the good berries.

This was my biggest strawberry and I was lucky I even found it because it was hidden inside one of the little shrubs. After I found that one, I started checking the insides of the shrubs and I found a few more similar to this just not as big.

When we were all done, we brought up our boxes to the guy and he weighed them for us. The berries were $3.00 a pound and mine came out to about $18 which was worth it because these were organic, all natural, no pesticide strawberries. So yes I gladly handed over my $20 to buy these strawberries. My co-workers ask if I tried some as I was picking and I said no but I should have because I had one in the car and they were delicious. After we finished picking we drove to Ben Lomond where we were going to can at my co-workers house. We saw this beautiful seaside and a bucket load of people parasailing:

When we got to her place, we started cutting and coring the strawberries. I think we cut about 12 cups full and that was enough to make about 15 jars of jelly. Mine were smaller so they did fill up a little quicker. My co-worker brought all the essentials to make the jelly including the sugar (which wasn’t a lot), pectin, some butter, utensils, pots, accessories, and everything else. All we had to bring was the jars. After the cutting we started mashing but didn’t mash it too much because we still wanted some strawberry chunks in there.

We then added the sugar and peptin and started cooking the mixture a pot. Meanwhile our jars were boiling in hot water and our lids were staying warm. After the mixture was thick enough we got it to a rolling boil and then we started pouring.

We filled up our 10 jars to preserve and then my extra 5 jars that were going to be not preserved since we could only process 10 jars at a time. We left one for the home-owners that let us use their kitchen, one went to my parents and the other 3 are sitting in my freezer. After we were done putting all the jelly in the cans, we boiled them and took them out to let them sit. After they sat for a few minutes we started hearing little pops from the lids which told us they were properly sealed. It was a fantastic process.

My co-worker brought my jelly to work for me today and here they are!! So cute, little 4oz. jars I got from Orchard Supply. Definitely worth the work. The rest of my strawberries are in the freezer at my parents house so we can use them for smoothies!

So if you ever want to make the jam, because I had no clue how to explain it, check out my co-workers blog where she explains the whole process: Jam Making!

She did an awesome job at helping us and made it a lot of fun.

Happy picking/jamming!(: