WHATELY — Sometimes as a toddler, I went strawberry picking with my family. We must’ve gotten in the car, drove out of Queens and maybe headed somewhere far out enough in Long Island where they had farms.
I remember long car rides driving out of the city and through the suburbs. Some time later when my dad had started circling back to the same Oldies songs to sing, we reached a place where we could go strawberry picking.
It was similar to my family’s annual tradition to head upstate to go apple picking. Apple-picking season, similar to strawberry season, was an opportunity to feel the change of seasons.
Moving to the Pioneer Valley in the dead of winter, I knew I had some things to look forward to, and at the top of that list was strawberry season.
Coworkers and Franklin County residents consistently told me to just wait for the summer and the fall to really start to feel what the area is all about.
First, I heard about asparagus season. I tried to embrace it, stopping at stands on Routes 5 and 10 to try these high-talked green-stalks.
Soon enough, these same stands started to show signs of giant strawberries. A few weekends ago, I had stopped again on the farm stand route and purchased a quart. Before I got back in my car I ate a couple with amazement, starting to understand the hype.
Over the next weeks, I would stop at strawberry stands across the county like when I was back home trying to find the best taco truck in the city. Some strawberries were ginormous with deep reds, while others were more modest but still punched a pack. Whenever I would come back to the newsroom with strawberries, the first question I would get: Where’d you get those from?
I realized though that I hadn’t gotten around to picking my own. Was it because I could just buy them fresh without having to trek hours for that same quality like I would get as a kid? Was it because going picking wouldn’t necessarily mean an escape from my current environment?
Finally, I went to the strawberry picking patch at Teddy Smiarowski’s farm on Routes 5 and 10 in Whately this past Friday.
In jeans and a collared shirt, coming from earlier work, I was given a look of: Do you really want to pick in that outfit? The sweat dripped from my brow and I just wanted to fill my basket. The city boy in me was coming to the surface.
I tried to pause and take in the serene feelings of picking your own food at a local farm, unlike my childhood of heading in and then heading back out.
When I finally went to eat the strawberries I picked I realized a superior taste. Whether it came from the fact they were just picked or it came from my own work, I was certainly satisfied. Over my few months here in Franklin County, I’m slowly learning what it means to be a local, one crop at a time. I hear blueberries are around the corner.
You can reach
Joshua Solomon at:
jsolomon@recorder.com
413-772-0261, ext. 264