Tour of Texas with Kids: Strawberry Picking in Alvin

This spring, the kids and I tried something new - strawberry picking in Alvin!  Our Friendswood-Alvin Mom's Club goes every year, but we had never managed to make it before, so we were excited when they scheduled the trip for a time we were in town.

Froberg's Farm is just a quick 20-minute drive from our house, but apparently it transported us into an alternate universe.  Let me explain.

My 2-year-old daughter is the pickiest eater this side of the Bermuda Triangle.  I believe she is on a quarterly cycle, where she will enthusiastically eat an item once every three months.  So if we have apples in January, I can't serve them again until April at the earliest.  And there are some items that she won't eat at all, most of them being of the wet, mushy, or slimy persuasion, thus eliminating many fruits and vegetables.  However, the trip to Froberg's Farm was the exception to her strict regimen.

The fun began as soon as our group was escorted to the bucket rental area.  I assumed we would just need one bucket, but realized quickly that shelling out $2 for each of them to have a bucket was a small price to pay for a morning free of bucket fights.  So, armed with our two buckets, we were routed toward the rules sign, where the kids learned not to pick the flowers or the white strawberries. We then set out for the strawberry fields.

Both kids took to strawberry picking as if they had done it their whole lives. They checked the plants carefully, only chose the red ones, and really didn't pull up the whole plant. It was just extra stem. Seriously.

What happened next will probably never be explained by modern science. My daughter asked for a strawberry. I rushed the kids back to the scale to have our buckets weighed and paid for our strawberries.  Then I ran over to the sinks to wash some for her. And lo and behold, she ate some strawberries. No coercion, no begging, she just ate them.  Of course, she hasn't eaten them since, but I still consider it a victory.