local fruit

I’m a morning person by nature; I’m often the first one in the office pounding out more work in the first few hours than I do later in the day. So last summer, when I ventured to Virginia to work on a farm, my tendency to wake up early helped me face the weekly, pre-dawn job of preparing for our weekly trip to the farmers’ markets.

I don’t just love strawberries; I love them, love them, LOVE THEM! Never, until recently, did I think I would feel this way about this ubiquitous berry. Never, until recently, had I eaten a strawberry for any other reason than their nutritional value. (I’d throw them in a smoothie and suck them down in liquid form to simply get it over with.) Never, until recently, did I eagerly accept a strawberry when it was offered to me with an enthusiastic “Have one!”  Never, until recently, did strawberries invoke any passion in me, only obligation in the name of my own heath and well being, and in the desire to be polite and not offend anyone.

But recently my luke-warm feelings about strawberries changed during an impromptu date with a strawberry from a very different place. This strawberry was sort of a distant cousin to the strawberry I had had a unfulfilling relationship with over the years – a nature-vs.-nurture-debate sort of strawberry.