If my mom would have had Instagram when I was a kid, I’m pretty sure that 90% of the photos she would have taken during the early summer months would have included me with red stained fingers, clothes and lips from all the strawberry snacking I would do. My grandpa’s strawberry patch always produced the most beautiful, juicy red strawberries… you know the berries you would swear had sugar on them straight from the garden, they were so sweet?

While my cousins would be off trying to catch the fish out of my Grandpa’s pond, I would be sneaking off for “just one more strawberry”. This would cause my Grandpa to exclaim “Well, I sure could have sworn I had a good bunch of strawberries for you to pick today. I wonder where they all went? Darn rabbits!” With a side eye glance and a wink towards my juice stained face, he never once got after me for eating all the strawberries. …

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This giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to Jill from Find Us Faithful whose comment number was chosen via random.org. Thanks to all who participated!

We are in the second full week of summer and have already marked several things off of our 2012 Summer Bucket List. It has been a great one so far!

Today we had the opportunity to head out to Happy Valley Farm in DeSoto, Kansas to do some blueberry picking. We were slightly too early in the season to get a whole gob of blueberries, but we can’t wait to go back! If you live near DeSoto and are looking for a small, family owned, chemical free farm to experience picking all different kinds of berries, you’ll be treated great and will love the personal experience you get at Happy Valley Farm.

I was bound and determined that this summer, I was going to make jam. We didn’t get enough berries picking today to make a batch of jam, so I stopped at the store on my way home and bought some blueberries. I came home, expecting jam to be a huge long process, only to discover that with this new Ball Automatic Jam Maker appliance I received from Kmart, it’s a quick, 30 minutes at the most, kind of deal. I gave a few jars of the jam out to neighbors and hope they think I slaved all day over a pot of berries to make their jam. I love them enough to do that, but in reality, this jam making project was quick and easy!…

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