Sunshine, Strawberries & Scones

Sunday the 24th July 2016 has officially been renamed to Strawberry Sunday. It should probably include raspberry in there somewhere, but it doesn't have quite the same ring, just like my super alliterative title that just rolls off the tongue. We've just celebrated our four year anniversary so what better way to spend day one-thousand-four-hundred-and-sixty-two of our relationship than by filling punnets with juicy berries. {no innuendo intended}

The last time we went fruit-picking the strawberries were out of season, so my pre-weekend mission was to find a farm that still had strawberries to pick. Turns out most farms do (need to work on my seasonality knowledge for when we get our allotment), so we chose The Balloon Tree, just a fifteen minute drive outside of York. 

Obviously we headed for the strawberries first, they're my favourite if you haven't already guessed. It didn't take us long to fill up a punnet of the plumpest strawbs so we then took a trip to the bottom of the field to find some raspberries. It seems no-one had ventured down to the spot we chose, so we had a wide bunch to choose from, and quickly filled up a second punnet. 

It's probably worth saying that this PYO farm isn't the cheapest, especially when it comes to paying per kg not per punnet, but the experience is super relaxing and it's a lot of fun choosing your own fruit/veg for the week. The also do some very tasty scones which make for a great afternoon tea!

Pontefract, Potatoes & Pumpkins

It's safe to say I'm cream crackered. It's just gone 9 o'clock and I could quite happily go to bed right now, twenty one going on eighty. I'd be going to bed very happy though as I have a two pumpkins on my sideboard (blue and orange to be precise, yes you heard me, blue) and a bath full of potatoes- they needed to dry out and living in a flat we don't have a garden/ shed. 

Today we left the city and ventured 30 miles South to the market town of Pontefract. The town itself wasn't very market-like but we found a castle with free parking, bingo, and free entry, double bingo. After wandering round the ruins and reading every sign we drove 1.6 miles down the road Farmer Copley's farm. I don't think we were aware of how popular this place would be, but it was the first weekend of pumpkin picking so really we shouldn't have been surprised. 

Wellies would have been the most sensible footwear to trudge across a field in, but nonetheless, my not-so-white converse held up. After walking past hundreds of pumpkins we reached the main reason for our visit, the potato field. We love potatoes, any form, any kind so we were delighted to be told they had blue ones for us to pick. No, I'm not loosing my marbles we have a blue pumpkin and blue potatoes. Once we filled a basket (and I had a worm thrown in my face) we took them off to be bagged, £5 for 12.5 kilos means we won't be needing potatoes until 2016. 

Looking back we probably should have got a wheel barrow as we entered the pumpkin field, so Jay may have ended up carrying the 12.5kg worth of potatoes round as we went in search of our pumpkins. (Pay back for throwing a worm in my face really) Now, I should probably put it out there that we didn't come here in search of a pumpkin, but upon talking to a witch, a member of staff that was dressed up, we were reassured that they would last until January if we really wanted! Another half an hour later we had found the right pumpkins and took them to the checkout ready to take home. 

By this point we were starving as we hadn't eaten lunch, so we put our goodies in the car and headed down to the cafe. I chose a sausage sandwich, whilst jay had a ham and chutney sandwich with some chips to share. We then went for a browse round the farm shop, pining over the fresh produce and yummy Halloween goodies. On our way out we stopped by the animals to say hello, then headed back to the car to make our way home. It was a lovely day, and we had our first of the potatoes with tea, they were delicious!