We now have a limited supply of black raspberries available for picking. You will find instructions at the Market Barn and picking supplies near the berries. Cost is $3.00 / pint. Come when we are open for picking strawberries or blueberries.

Serious blueberries are here. We plan to bring lots to both Peoria and Princeton on Saturday.

Blueberry U-pick will open Saturday morning at 7:00. Most rows are not fully ripe, but there are some berries ready in lots of rows. If you aren’t among the first to arrive, you may have to pick over a number of bushes to get what you want, but there are pretty good quantities available. Please read how to pick blueberries before coming.

The rain is over, at least for the morning, and picking conditions are great. The rows are full of strawberries.

As we were weeding the blueberries today, we found an occasional ripe berry. Very good! We might well have enough for me to bring a few half-pints to Princeton market on Saturday. It looks like it will be a great blueberry year, with many branches bending way down under the weight of the berries even though they mostly haven’t reached full size yet. I expect it will still be another two weeks before we will open for u-pick.

The strawberries are ripe for the picking. This should be an excellent week. After a rest from picking on Sunday, the rows are thick with ripe berries. The warm weather in the forecast should make all week a fine time to pick lots of strawberries.

Here’s the schedule for the Tiskilwa Strawberry Festival. On Friday, June 12, at 7 PM there is music by the Generics at Tiskilwa West Park. On Saturday, June 13, there are garage sales throughout town from 8 until 3. Tiskilwa Historical Society has Kids’ Activities at the museum on Main from 9 AM to 2 PM. At West Park on Saturday the 4-H is selling pork sandwiches, taco boats and more from 11 until 2, Plow Creek is selling strawberries, strawberry shortcake with ice cream, and Plow Creek Bakery goods, also from 11 - 2, and more children’s activities.

We now have enough strawberries ripe and ready for you to come pick some. These are very nice berries, but still fairly scarce. It will take several full rows to fill a flat. We are opening this evening from 4 P.M. until 8 P.M.

We will make our first CSA distributions this week. People will receive some of the following: rhurbarb, popcorn, salad greens, herbs, radishes, and bread from Plow Creek Bakery. I will try to post the week’s list on the Peek in the Box page weekly.

Saturday is our first Farmers’ Market. We will be in Princeton with salad greens, radishes, mint, rhubarb, popcorn, stinging nettle, and Plow Creek Bakery goods. We might have a few strawberries; if so we will limit them to one pint per customer. We hope for larger quantities in a week or so. Market opens at 8:30 A.M. We probably won’t stay until official closing time of 2:00 P.M. so come early.

We saw our first few ripe strawberries today. Most are not close to ripe, so we probably won’t be open for picking until the second week of June. I’ll announce it here if we end up opening sooner. We might have enough berries to take a few to farmers’ markets the first week of June.

Yesterday I saw my first strawberries and blueberries of the year. They are small and green, but growing. I’d estimate our first strawberries for sale at either the June 2 or June 6 Princeton Farmers’ Market, with the first blueberries available about two weeks later.