I love the South. I was born and raised here in Atlanta and love so much about the history and culture of the South. I may sound like a Yankee, but I’m a Southerner through and through. My brother and I still laugh about the hat that I used have, “American by birth, Southern by the grace of God.” Yep, I was that cool. 
Anywho, one of my favorite things is the incredible fruits and vegetables that are available this time of year. Both mine and Michael’s family have so many great memories that involved the dinner table. I still remember helping my grandmother shell butter beans and snap green beans when they came in at the stand down the street. The excitement of when the corn was silver queen and not just white or yellow! I love hearing the stories that Michael will tell of his grandfather’s garden and all that he and his cousins learned from Paw-Paw. There is nothing better than fresh butter beans, silver queen corn, tomatoes with homemade ranch dressing, squash, lady peas, okra, vidalia onions, peaches, watermelons, blackberries-you get my drift. So a few weeks ago, Michael and I decided to start a yearly tradition of going berry picking. We headed south to Adams Farm in Fayetteville to see what magic we could find and oh what magic it was. Here are Luke and Michael heading to the blueberry bushes:
Luke was quite proud of how he was “heppin fill our buttets.” It was so cute to hear him down the rows of bushes and the excitement he had to find good berries.
I LOVE blackberries and so Luke was the perfect height to help me pick those. Especially since I don’t bend over so well these days.
We also picked raspberries for the first time. We had no idea what to look for, but we got something right because those things were like eating red sugar cubes-SO GOOD!! We finished our time picking and finished up in the Farmer’s Market attached to the farm that sells other things they grow. Here is all our loot:
From this, I froze some blueberries, blackberries, and butter beans. We had to put the peaches in the brown paper bag to ripen them for the homemade peach ice cream I made. I fried the corn (still have to work on perfecting that!) to go with our fried chicken & veggie meal. Everything else, we just gorged ourselves on. So yummy!!
All this to say, I am looking forward to this new tradition. I’m hoping to continue getting better at cooking the vegetables so that I can try to create the memories for my family that Michael and I were so fortunate to have created for us. I look forward to shelling butter beans and lady peas with Luke and Jr. Maybe even snapping and stringing some green beans. I want to actually learn how to fry the corn like Mermer (Michael’s mom) did. I’m not sure we will ever have a garden like it sounds like Paw-Paw did, but I sure hope Michael gets to teach his boys some of the things he learned from his Paw-Paw.
