For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for September 07, 2014

I sort of feel The Beatles coming on.

I loved doing that when I was younger…strawberry and apple picking are the best when your young because you can take your future kids out there too when they’re old enough

Only Elizabeth? What did the boy do, consume less or just neater.

There is a restaurant north of the city that specializes in strawberries. We took our daughters there when they were 1 and 3. While our older one has always had a propensity towards neatness (she didn’t even wear a smidge of chocolate cake on her 1st birthday), our younger one more than made up for it: head to toe strawberry!!!

My hubby and I joined a Fruit Share program and netted ourselves over 20 lbs of plums yesterday.

I was about 5 when we went picking cherries. Started home with a 5-pound box full. My parents were a bit upset when we got home with an empty box. I still love cherries, 60 years later.

They weighed Elizabeth because she was eating the strawberries instead of putting them in the basket.

We have a nice garden, but we also have birds, rabbits and deer, so we don’t get to do this as much as we’d like. I do remember apple-picking, and really enjoyed using the basket-thingy. Bending down to pick strawberries sounds like much less fun for adults. Our kindergartners at the school do it yearly though, and I can guarantee you that mine will eat at least a quart when she does it this coming Spring!

As a tween, my bff and I would hit the blueberry fields in Algona, WA for pocket money. It took 2 of the large buckets, 2 of the medium ones and one small one each, to get $10 for the day and that was big money then.Recently, I was given carte blanche on 4 bush grove in a neighbors yard.. I’ve enough blueberries to last the winter in my freezer and I’ve found that picking berries is like riding a bicycle, you never forget how.. lol

You don’t take kids berry picking if you don’t want them to eat berries while they pick. Most adults will eat them while picking, too!

Ah, memories. When I was living in Ohio from 1984 to 1999, my church had a huge welfare farm on which it grew apples and strawberries. When strawberry season (June) hit each year, everybody and his dog had to spend so many hours harvesting strawberries. While it was fun (yes, I sampled a few berries myself as I harvested — just to make sure they were ripe, of course!), I remember going to bed at night with muscles aching that I didn’t even know I had, and closing my eyes to sleep and seeing acres and acres of strawberries (sometimes, I’d even SMELL them!). Now, what was really work was weeding the patch in April and May, as well as pruning the apple trees in April — THAT was work that everyone hated!

We always had a HUGE garden while I was growing up. Daddy would take my Pomeranian mix with him out to the garden to pick the strawberries. Punkin would sneak around him and eat only the red ones! We also had blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. He used bird netting to keep the birds from eating all the berries. Turtles were a different matter with the strawberries though. We would find several that had at least one bite out of them, not to mention they would take a bite or two of the tomatoes! Ahhh, memories!!!

You are to be pitied, Daniel.

ooh so good

I have fond memories of apricot picking with my family when we were kids. It was fun to eat them when we were in the trees! yum!

We didn’t ask the kids (my grandkids) whether they wanted to go for apple picking at the orchard in Gibbsville, WI, that we frequent, or tell them that it’s fun. It’s edu-ma-cational, so we just took them. They had fun anyhow.

We went strawberry picking when I was a kid too. I also dreaded it, but went anyway. I LOVED the results and loved eating strawberries fresh off the plant, so it was worth it. I’ve only had a chance to take my kids once, but will make the effort again as they love fresh food.

@comicsssfanWe are not here to be your therapists.

Back in the Reagan era when I was stationed in West Germany, I remember seeing this strip in the Stars & Stripes. However, I never saw it again until now. Does Lynn Johnston not include every strip in her FBOFW books?

Hahahaha! ;)

howtheduck: Like Lynn, we picked strawberries in the Frasier Delta, but never got to the Okanagan. In the 1970s, they calculated the on-site consumption in the price. And back then, DDT had been outlawed and Dioxin was only used to cause birth defects in south-east Asia.

howtheduck: Like Lynn, we picked strawberries in the Frasier Delta, but never got to the Okanagan. In the 1970s, they calculated the on-site consumption in the price. And back then, DDT had been outlawed and Dioxin was only used to cause birth defects in south-east Asia.

…not berry plausible