This morning, as I was browsing to see if there is any local farm’s market around San Antonio that is open, found the Marburger Orchard. It is located right outside of Fredericksburg off of Highway 87.
Marburger Orchard offers Strawberries, Peaches, Blackberries and some vegetables for public picking. The price for picking strawberries is $2.25/lb, plus a one-time charge of $0.50 for the re-useable picking box. The owner told us that they have return customers who have kept and reused the picking boxes for the last three years. Each box can hold about 6-7 lbs. worth of produce. That is more than enough to enjoy for yourself and plenty to share with family and friends.
They told us there was a huge turn out yesterday and over 800 lbs worth of strawberries were picked. They are expecting to have about 200-300 lbs of ripen strawberries ready for picking today. So always call ahead to check and see if there are enough for picking before you go and check if they might close early.
The owner had samples of strawberries that were the “properly ripen” ones to show us how to carefully look for the good strawberries to pick and learn not to pick the ones that are not completely ripen. You basically want to turn the strawberry to see if there are any white/light areas, if there is, then it is not completely ripen. Shoot for the deep red color ones, and leave the others time to ripen for future picking. Do not pick the unripe ones since they do not continue to ripe after bring picked, even though they might become redder in color. They also said DON’T wash the berries until you are ready to use them. Washing makes the berries more prone to spoiling. I found a pretty good source for making jam. So I might report back if I ended up making my own strawberry jam!
After the quick picking-lesson, I am ready to pick some delicious strawberries! Jeremy had his photo gear ready to snap some beautiful orchard photos for our stock photo site. There are lots of peach trees in bloom and a little patch of wild flower with lots of butterflies around. I am just smiling from ear-to-ear trying not to skip my way to the strawberry field. 
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