<p>This reminds me of when I was maybe 12, and I picked strawberries one summer to earn money for school clothes. It was very disappointing to me that I wasnt tall enough to pick blueberries. Blueberry picking was easier as you could stand up & the farms were much closer to my house. One farm was in downtown Bellevue!
It was pretty common in the '60’s. Not alot for young teens to do, and school buses would pick us up at the local school early in the morning & drop us off at the end of the day.</p>
<p>I had forgotten all about it until I saw this book.</p>
<p>I used to live next to the blueberry farm on Cottage Lake when I was 18 with my boyfriend.
Do you know if thats still there?
I have a blueberry hedge in my front yard.
Lots of berries this year.</p>
<p>There was a blueberry patch near Cottage Lake until recently, but I think it is closed now - the land became too expensive to grow berries instead of growing houses. :)</p>
<p>When I was growing up most of my friends earned extra money by picking asparagus, detasseling corn, and “walking” (weeding) soybean fields. We’d go out to the fields in the back of pick-up trucks, and we’d flirt and play and generally have fun while we were working. Everybody did it. Not just the kids who “needed the work.” Now kids around where I grew up are too busy doing college-worthy activities and most of the fields have become housing developments. </p>
<p>(This is the point where John Mellencamp’s “Small Town” always starts going through my head…and that’s happening a lot lately. I’m really getting old.)</p>
<p>I didnt know anyone else who picked berries, we lived in an area where local churches ran summer camps, but our family wasnt very religious & that wasnt an option.
( it also cost money)
But it gave me something to do and then when we drove to CA at the end of summer, I had money to go shopping in Santa Monica with my great aunt. I felt so stylish!
;)</p>
<p>Both my kids volunteered at the zoo and at a local residential camp, summers in high school.
Cleaning pony foreskins and shoveling dookie.
I think they worked at least as hard as I did.</p>
<p>I didn’t pick anything for pay, but I still do go to pick-your-own farms and now I can what I pick. Nothing like homemade strawberry jam in the dead of winter! </p>
<p>A local organic farm also freezes fruit like berries & rhubarb and sells them year round so you can even make it year round if you dont get it together in the summer.</p>
<p>First we had to pump our own gas and wash the windshield.Then it was checkout our food and bag it ourselves and even carry it out to our own car. Now we have to take a long drive to some buggy field and pick our own fruit and even pay to use their boxes.</p>
<p>What’s next? </p>
<p>Chase a steer around and rope him and kill him and cook him? Mash grapes with our bare feet while listening to Yanni and then bottling up the juice? Shovel out a bushel of potatoes and discard the worms and dirt? Milk the cow and pour the milk into growlers to take home? ;-)</p>
<p>It was a brilliant idea to get customers to do the labor for nothing. </p>
<p>I cut down my own christmas tree. I pick blueberries, strawberries, and apples every year. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see the irony when people complain they are too tired or haven’t any time any more. </p>
If the rabbits leave my bushes alone. </p>