U pick
 

I have fond u pick memories. TH and I spent our first real date going to eastern washington for the day and doing a big pepper pick. I trusted her enough to hand her the keys to my less than one year old car and made her drive home. ;)

Since then, we try and do at least one or two upick adventures a year. Sadly, our pepper place is no longer.

Yesterday we went north to pick blueberries. We picked 13 lbs and bought another four.

We have enough for smoothies for sure.

Anyone else enjoy upick?

lala

No.

Despise it.

Prefer Safeway ;)

I remember as a child going to upick strawberries.

I also remember going into the green bean fields after the machines went through to pick. We used to pick large paper grocery bags... until we discovered the "secret". If you knew the day they picked, you could fill your bags with the spillage after the machines dumped into the trucks. We were actually told by the workers to do this. So, we'd get all our green beans for a year in 5 minutes.

A left, right, left and another two miles up that road is a great pick your own vegetable farm.

We are there every weekend getting 20 or so pounds of veggies. Currently Tomatoes (which are having a massive problem with blossom end rot so far) squash, and cukecumbers. Peppers, eggplants, etc are still a couple weeks away.

Even closer is a pick your own peach and apple orchard, haven't had time yet, but the peaches are ready.

In June, it's Strawberries and later in the season it's another 15 or so miles to a very nice apple orchard.

We literaly spend hours every weekend if the weather permits at the u-pick farms in the area

U pick brings back great memories for our family as well.

As a kid, we always went to pick apples, peaches and strawberries as a family outing. There was one strawberry u pick that was beside a golf range and I went to pick golf balls. I remember I picked up over 100 golf balls in an hour. Parents were annoyed that I was more interested in the balls than the strawberries but I managed to sell them for a great profit later.

My wife hates the concept thus we do not go that often anymore.

As a kid, we used to hit:
Eastern WA - Apricots, pears and peaches. Marysville - strawberries, blackberries and blueberries. South Sound - a long time ago, huckleberries.

Used to love it, now I dont get to it much since moving south. We have places to go, but time is a problem.

I am absolutely not keen on u pick....That is why I have Giant nearby. I am not the type of gal to search for my food in the wild. :)

U pick is far more expensive than road side stand prices in my area. Even in the road sides were 1000X as much, I'd pay the price rather then u pick.

My childhood u pick memories are of being fried to a crisp in a strawberry field. The blueberry picking has better memories but either I'm a lot bigger or the bushes are a lot smaller because I no longer see how I could fit underneath a blueberry bush and pick. I will admit apple picking is ok but the price per u pick pound is outrageous.

On my great-grandmother's farm we used to pick apples, pears and grapes. I'm not sure if those memories are so wonderful due to her or due to the fun times with my cousins?

If you ever have Japanese visitors visiting. This is a great way to spend the afternoon. They LOVE this concept. Unheard of in Japan.

Old, young or boys/girls - the idea of picking your own food blows them away and they want to try it. Never had one that don't take a billion pictures and talk about it for hours on end.

I LOVE this. I've picked blueberries and apples every year since i was alittle child. I have to agree that hunching over for the strawberries is not always the best experience.

As a kid, blueberries and strawberries. Sometimes we went to local farms and paid by the pound, but I also knew locations of numerous berry patches. The wild strawberries were tiny but close to home. The blueberries were prolific but you had to keep an eye out for wild gourmets.

I also picked unoffical apples. I was travelling with a friend in Connecticut and came across an orchard that had already been harvested. We filled a sleeping bag with what they had left behind and brought them back to the school cafeteria for pies and applesauce.

I don't think we've ever been to a "formal" U pick'em type spot.

I've picked LOTS of different kinds of berries in the Northwoods of Wisconsin and while camping in MN and Ontario.

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I still go out with my dad in the late summer / fall for peaches and apples, nectarines if possible. There are still some decent orchards to be found in Virginia - more than a few great ones are gone.

At $14 - $16 per bushel, apples work out to about 32 cents a pound - not bad for high quality fruit.

We saw some Japanese tourists doing u pick when we did our blueberry pick. I thought it was cool.

I hope they made it to cascadian farms after hitting our blueberry farm.

I've seen plenty of places in Japan where you can do this, although it usually involves eating it then and there (cherries, strawberries, grapes) and is priced as a flat fee for a particular period of time. Usually the name of the fruit followed by -gari, if I remember correctly.