Portland Love: Adventure Day to Sauvie Island

Portland Love is a series in which I take to the streets of Portland, eating at new places, shopping at new shops, smelling old books and doing my best to not get too wet without the use of an umbrella. It's my way of falling in love with this city over and over again while sharing it with you. Enjoy! 

I have a confession to make... The first time I went to Sauvie Island was not the day of the beach trip. I had been weeks before (maybe even a little over a month before) berry picking with my friend Alysha. 
Honestly Sauvie Island is like a small piece of paradise to me. It has quiet shores, fruits and veggies for days, and beautiful views. If I thought I was going to live in Portland forever I'd probably try to find myself a house there... it's probably super expensive though. 


Our day of picking started with eating at Chipotle and getting really full. I put loads of sunscreen on before I even left the house because I knew we would be in the hot sun all day. The temperature when the wind blew was perfect but at some points during our adventure the raspberries vines blocked the wind from reaching us. Sun glasses got fogged and I had left the house without a hair tie. The pits. 


Kroger farm where we picked berries is gorgeous. There was an area that had tents and picnic tables for events and it looked like they were setting up for a wedding. 
When we first arrived we parked in a field and then found ourselves some boxes and cartons to hold what we were going to pick.

We looked at the signage and I took a picture so we could see where we were when we were out there. Going to be real honest, we figured out where everything was more by talking to people we passed than the sign. 

We started our walk straight ahead and made a slight turn to the left following some other people in the distance. We first came across some blueberries but they didn't seem quite ripe so we trekked on. We found the first vines of raspberries but they seemed a tad picked over so we went back a couple of rows. Success. 

The rows stretched on for a good distance and berry picking is a bit of a slow process. Most of the berries came right off the vine. In the beginning I may have picked some unripe ones but once we started getting into it the pickings got better. We went down one row, came up to the house and walked a couple rows over to go back down to the path. On our way back we found a treasure trove of perfectly ripe raspberries and so we picked more while the sun was quite hot and the wind deterred by the vines.

After our hour or so of raspberry picking we walked around attempting to find other berries. Our point of being there at first had been strawberries but when we looked at them there were slim pickins. Pretty sure they were done a couple weeks earlier in the season. The blackberries were close to ripe but not quite there yet so we left those be as well.

We saw some artichoke plants which I found awesome and fascinating as well as other raspberry vines which had been horribly picked over. We had done well to go to the farther ones. Can't say it had been on purpose but sometimes you happen upon great things.

Despite leaving with only raspberries we felt the adventure was definitely a success. I mean, look at all those raspberries! I ate some of them after I dropped Alysha off, not going to lie, I didn't even wash them. :o They were so, so much better than any store raspberry I had ever eaten. And not because I put sweat and toil into getting them either. Honestly it wasn't that strenuous to pick them. ;)

I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat them all before they got bruised and mushy so I started freezing them batch by batch.

I read somewhere during my fresh food research that you have to freeze them outside of a bag before you put them all together. So that's just what I did (and later I did that with a bunch of strawberries from the grocery store).

Like I said before Sauvie Island is awesome and full of wonderful things for a food and relaxation nerd like me. I highly recommend it. I'm not sure I'm going to do the pumpkin patch or anything like that this year though, I hear getting off the island on the one road can be a bit difficult and time consuming. I might give it a shot anyway, I want to make a pumpkin recipe from fresh pumpkin this coming fall.

xoxo

If you have a place you want me to check out feel free to leave me a comment or email me!