1. On the 13th of June, the first pints of strawberries appear at the Portland farmers’ market. While setting up the market stand, I resolve to wait until the strawberries at the general store are ripe and not buy any at market. At 7:15 a.m., Carol, a cheerful customer brings by a pint and tells us to help ourselves. The berries are sweet, juicy, and irresistible. By 7:45 I begin to worry that they’ll sell out quickly. I’m not waiting any longer. I buy two pints. The first is finished before returning home from market. The other is eaten the next morning, on-top of waffles. That day is one of the first truly hot, beating sun days. A neighbor comes over to help in the garden. He brings over his wheel hoe and we work until the weeds are knocked down. We have pie (not strawberry, but rhubarb), and fresh berries. In the early evening I swim and know that it’s summer.

2. The week of June of 15th is heavy with anticipation for strawberry season to start at Sheepscot General Store. The farm at the store has one of the only certified organic pick-your-own berry fields in the state. The phone won’t stop ringing. The first ripe berries are sampled by the the store staff and we tell everyone soon! So soon! There’s a Michael Hurley concert in Portland. Jon and I go with Eliot, a fellow who farms with us one day a week. He likes Robbie Basho (Blue Crystal Fire listeners united!) and goats. Michael Hurley plays Diamond Joe, Oh My Stars and amuses the crowd with his version of “Sweet Home Alabama” with a chorus of: “We hoe marijuana.” The next day there are quarts of berries for sale at the store and a few of my high school friends arrive for the 5th annual cake walk party. Soon becomes even sooner.

3. Pre-calk walk strawberry buttercream frosting curdling woes and the subsequent saving of said frosting with more butter, brings up the age old question: when is more butter, a small handful of strawberries and a quick swim not the solution to the problem?

4. The cake walk is magic! The cake walk started when I lived in Oregon and discovered that two of my co-workers and I had birthdays within a few days of each other. One day (or many days), I was talking about cake to Tayne, who was born two days after me and is in ways so similar to me, I’m sure we’re almost sisters. She had never been to a cake walk and suggested we have one to celebrate our birthdays. The first walk was a roaring success.

So many cakes! So many people whom I just recently, or never before, met came with cake and started summer together. It was dizzying; the creativity, the enthusiasm, the amount of sugar. Over the years, the cake walk has continued. Certain variations and changes made me miss that original excitement. The surge of happiness from the unpredicted. This year, there was little planning, little expectations, just the desire that there would be cake, new and old friends, and a party outside. It was that, and then some.

There was a massive chocolate cake that could have passed for a wedding cake, each layer topped with strawberry pieces. Shony-baby assembled a donut tower into a cake, which made all the kids (and some adults to) impatient for the cake walk to begin. Jon made a s’mores cake that looked and tasted like a giant campfire delight. Nick brought a German chocolate cake that was a first time ever-baked-a-cake cake! Nora, who has dubbed the cake walk her favorite holiday, baked the most swooned over cake: a chocolate lavender cake with an earl grey buttercream. There was a fire, plenty of food, and people whom I hardly knew bringing cake along with people whom I know the best. It was perfect.

5. Post-cake walk, there are strawberries everywhere. U-pick is open and the phone rings and rings. We expect that the picking will go on for at least three weeks, but everyone is anxious to begin. People line up in the parking lot before the store opens at seven. I wait until after store hours and go out into the quiet field. There’s a peach-light sky and I find plenty of berries to fill my freezer and my belly.

6. The first week of picking is over. I head to Long Lake, where my family has gone since my grandmother was a child. She’s ninety and waits all year to go to the lake. This particular weekend, of June 27th, which happens to my birthday, is also the first summer weekend for her. My parents, my brother and sister, and my aunts are all there. Saturday is cool and overcast and we go on a short hike that has big, moody views of the mountains and lakes along the Maine-New Hampshire border. At night we BBQ and eat what is the ultimate strawberry cake.

The particular cake was made for my birthday a few years ago and when I requested the cake the following year, no one could remember where the recipe had come from. A few years passed without the cake. There was much discussion of how good it was, how my sister never had it, and where-oh-where could the recipe have come from. Last year, somehow, my dad remembered, it was from an old Bon Appetit. The cake was made. My brother, being the lil-know-it-all that he is, mentioned how this wasn’t made first for my birthday, but for my mom’s birthday, many years ago. No, no, you’re wrong, we all insisted. He sent us proof, a dated photo from years before, with the caption “TELL ME I’M WRONG!”. This cake, the family strawberry cake, is legendary. And like many foods that connect family and memory, it is delicious.

7. Strawberry picking is ongoing. The short rain spells, combined with the sun and the warm days make strawberry ripening ideal. The season is longer than ever before and thousands of pounds are being picked off of one acre. I make strawberry ice cream, twice. Strawberry shortcakes, because they are a favorite of my grandmother and Matt. Strawberry buttermilk cake, because I bought a new cookbook. And strawberry ice cream, again, because STRAWBERRIES.

8. There’s a pop-up snack shop event at Dandelion Spring Farm. Last year, when Sarah and I brought snacks to the on-farm vegetable pick-up, we would experiment and make a variety of treats. This year, I’m going alone, and decided to simplify. Making what have become Tall Trees’ standards: ginger-molasses cookies; chocolate rye cookies; chocolate chunk cookies; honey pie with sea salt. People want sweet. People want chocolate. But, I make a strawberry rhubarb pie, ’tis the season. Only the other farmers there order the pie. We all agree, it’s good, really good. Although I wish it had been more popular, I’m glad it’s one of the only items leftover, because it’s what I want to eat. I have a piece the next morning for breakfast and am glad to have gone. Having the chance to connect with people that aren’t close friends, but aren’t just customers, is a part of the small-business equation that gives me the warm feeling that community is real.

9. The picking lasts until mid-July. The longest, best strawberry season, possibly of our lifetimes. Towards the end, though there are still plenty of sweet berries to pick, people trickle in. The initial frenzy is forgotten, everyone is ready for the next fruit. The asking turns towards blueberries, tomatoes, corn and beans. We want, we want, we have, and we want again. Frequently, when I weigh a box of berries, people tell me how this bounty is the pay-off for such a long winter, or how I’m looking at future jam, part of the prepping process for the upcoming season. Summer is not without winter. It’s hard to eat a bowl of yogurt with fresh fruit and not be aware of the ephemerality of the farm season. I have a freezer full of berries, but those too, won’t last forever. Some dark January day, I too will yearn again. To be out in the heat picking berries, after a long day of picking vegetables. Wishing there was more time to swim and eat ice cream with friends; wishing for it to always be strawberry season.

All photos credited to Nora. P. Carr.