Family Farm Time

A couple of days ago, my son found out that strawberries and raspberries do not come from Trader Joe’s, but a farm, in fact.  Well, he knew that, but never really saw it in person until our visit to farmland.

I grabbed my family and we headed out west to the country…that’s right, Moorpark – to Underwood Family Farms (and no, they don’t grow families there).  With a less than one-hour drive outside of Los Angeles (six or seven hours in traffic), we got there.

For a $3 entrance fee per person (during the week), you are welcome to grab a wagon, throw your belongings and your child in it and haul it through the fields.  So we did.
The farm was beautiful and immaculate – and much cheaper and cleaner than the Tree House Social Club indoor playground I went to (see my earlier post).

We were overwhelmed with the amount of things to see and do (we don’t get out much).  Since we were there during their Harvest Festival, which continues until November 1st, there were a variety of pumpkins you could pick and every type of squash you could imagine.

There was also an animal area where you could feed chickens and a play area for kids with tunnels to run through and haystacks to climb.

After my son loaded the wagon with just about every squash and baby pumpkin around and I unloaded it (even though $1 each was a great price, what would I do with $50 worth of squash?), we headed to the strawberry fields.  Did the Beatles have this particular one in mind when they came up their lyrics?  Just wondering.

We had a great time picking the strawberries and loading our empty cartons.  According to Underwood Family Farm rules, we were allowed to sample the fruit as long as we “don’t make a lunch out of it,” but we decided to fill our cartons and pay on our way out.  Apparently the Joneses picking alongside us had a very different definition of what “lunch” actually meant, as they kept sampling and sampling and sampling and sampling, but oddly their carton was empty.

We moved on from strawberry picking to raspberries and filled our cartons.

We pulled our wagon to the exit and had our pickings weighed.  Fifteen dollars for cartons full of strawberries and raspberries, three pumpkins, dried Indian corn, a funky shaped squash that my son really wanted, and loads of fun.  We are definitely going back there soon.  It was a great time had by all and it got my son to eat more fruit…for a little while anyway.