Our Encounter With the Insane Strawberry Lady

This morning, we thought it would be a fun family outing to go pick strawberries. There is nothing better than fresh strawberries and enjoying the fruits of your labor!(Plus, I am really craving Susan's strawberry pie!) So...we met Susan, Lauren, & Kyle (Tom's sister and kids) at the Afton Apple Orchard this AM. Owen, as always, was excited to see the Kubats and especially excited to pick strawberries. Boxes in hand, we followed a young man to our strawberry rows. He kindly explained to us which row was our row and that we pick straight down the middle of the row on both sides of us. We were having a good ol' time. Owen was being a good boy helping me put ripe strawberries in the box. He didn't quite get the concept of picking the red strawberries and not the green ones! Plus, pretty soon he was eating every one we gave him anyways! Oh well...fun was had by all until.....the Insane Strawberry Lady (I would say in her 60's or 70's) started picking next to us!!!

Here is a play by play: (sorry if it's a bit lengthy)

You could immediately hear her griping about how everything was all picked over and she wasn't finding anything. (Mind you, the season is still early so the plants are not as plentiful...) She continues to go ON and ON and ON about how she isn't finding much. Then, she proceeds to say, "hey, you two, you're picking my row!" to Tom and Owen. And she said this a couple of times because we were ignoring her as we did not think she was saying that to us. But, then she piped up again and said right to me (none of what she said was very nice or tactful what-so-ever) "you're picking my row!" And I said, " well the guy told us to pick both sides," and she adamantly said, "No, this is my row." (which, by the way, she was wrong--we double checked afterward to make sure we weren't wrong) At that point I held my tongue and stopped picking. (so did Tom) I am not a confrontational person but I really would have liked to say more to her! But, it was so not worth arguing over! This was supposed to be an enjoyable experience and she obviously did not find it that way! She was so obsessed with getting strawberries! Heaven forbid she didn't get enough strawberries! This is a huge place--I'm sure she very well could have gotten another row but no, had to yell at us (including a 2 year old!) So yeah, we were all pretty irritated after that. We figured we had gotten enough strawberries for now so we didn't even finish picking our row.
Also, apparently, after we were done, Lauren said she was still griping about how things were picked over (even though we didn't even finish picking the whole row!!) AND she was talking to herself and working up a sweat about how "she had to keep going,keep going,keep picking strawberries!" CRAZY!! That's all I can say! Although, this first family strawberry picking experience was not quite ideal...it has not deterred us from going again. Hopefully next time it will be much more enjoyable! Oh well, we still have fresh strawberries! Now, it's time to make some pie!!!

Owen checking out all the strawberries


Strawberries!