Berries and Bean Picking… July 2012

Sharing is caring!

It was sadly quite clear that both of our boys were feeling under the weather this Sunday.  Both had temperatures and were fractious and miserable. If it was me, I’d want to be home, snuggling, watching old movies and relaxing.  Our Little Adventurer however likes to go down swinging.  He also has an amazing  memory and was at pains to remind us that we were supposed to go to the farm to get berries today.
So, huskies walked, showers taken, we headed off for the Raspberry Farm.  The farmer’s wife was chatting to Jensen about the berries and was fascinated by how much he spoke.  I’m so proud of him 🙂
A few seconds later we were on our way across the gravel track and into the fields.  Jensen was off.  He even bought his own red bucket with him.

 

Jensen’s “bestest” smile with his first few picked berries…

Apparently the farmer says it’s okay for Jensen to eat some of the berries… Or so he says 😉

Baby Dragon was eyeing up the pretty pink fruits…

Jensen soon got the hang of it and took great delight in squishing the occasional the raspberry between his fingers.

Jensen’s concentration is quite something.

 

 

 

We worked well as a team 🙂

 

Jensen’s punnet was getting quite full, whereas mine….  Mine was getting emptied by a cheeky little Dragon…

 

Jensen was getting skittish and made a few breaks for the greenhouse tunnels and so we decided to move on.  Beans were next on our agenda.

On the way to the bean field, Dadda noticed tiles in the hedgerow.  In Hampshire, this means creatures underneath.  Usually slow worms, sometimes grass snakes, but this time it was…

An ant nest.  Ewww, these turn my stomach.  I want to scramble them all up, stamp on them and run screaming about how disgusting they look.  Any insect eggs just freak me out.  Of course I can’t say that in front of Jensen and so I pretended to be as amazed as he was.  After all, if he decides to become a bug expert, I don’t want to dampen his spirit…   Gav stifled a laugh as he could see the look on my face as I snapped a photo for Jensen.

Lyoto was less than impressed and was happy to huggle on Dadda for a while instead.

One of the little ants decided to try and escape with me for a less harsh life running the nest.

As we left the nest behind, we encountered something else that Jensens are rather fond of.  Puddles; and even better than that, these were muddy puddles, and there were lots of them.

 

Jensen could not wait to get some air.  See here? He’s mid air.  Ready to get wet, anyone? I knew what was coming, it was futile to fight it.

 

After over ten minutes of puddle jumping (some of which I will upload later to video) and completely soaking himself in muddy water, a stripped down Jensen and I joined Dadda and Baby Dragon in the bean fields.  Neither Gav nor I had grown broad beans before and so had no idea what to look for when picking them ~ and even funnier, we had never seen them growing before!  Jensen soon tucked into the beans though.

Pick it, eat it.  It’s that simple.

Jensen told us all about beanstalks.  People climb these to see Willy the Giant, don’t you know?

 

More beans in our bellies…

 

 

 
Beanstalks!

 

 
I saw this and got excited.  It looked like a perfect beanstalk………except it wasn’t.
 
We gathered a few beans, but not before I managed to get stung by nettles about a million times up my leg.  I was searching for a dock leaf, and Gavin tried handing me dandlion leaves… *Sigh*  He claims that it would have had a placebo effect if I hadn’t known better.  I told him that hairy legs like his do not know the annoying sting of a nettle.

 

I showed Jensen my amazing bean.

 

Then Jensen and I decided to recreate the scene from the Giant Turnip, but with a bean.  I’ll spare you the photos ~ we fell, we got stung, we had nettles on our bottoms.  We got the bean though.

 

A few minutes later, last beans and berries picked, Jensen was getting tired and cuddly, and wanted to be carried.  We headed back to pay…..and our Little Adventurer was asleep within seconds.

 
Stay tuned for what we did with the berries!

Similar Posts

One Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.