Visiting a strawberry farm was the very first activity we did together with my parents in law when they were visiting us in Finland last summer. Okay, not really the very first activity as this was most likely getting home from the airport…
Anyways, why visiting a strawberry farm? There are actually two reasons for this. One, my wife always wanted to visit one and handpick herself strawberries (she loves strawberries) and second, my parents in law could not imagine picking berries themselves and eating them without some very thorough cleaning. Especially the second part seemed to be an impossible task for my father in law due to his OCD. Nothing is ever clean enough for him except he cleaned it himself three times.
But imagine our surprise when he went and started picking up strawberries without gloves and ate them without any cleaning. When my wife asked about it he just shrugged his shoulders and said “It is so much cleaner here than in China” and continued collecting more strawberries. No further information given by him but he looked relaxed while walking those fields and searching for the biggest and reddest berry yet. All my wife managed to say about it was “I don’t believe what I am seeing” and stared at her father.
Besides being busy with collecting and eating strawberries my parents in law were also surprised that there were so many people in the fields instead of just buying the berries from the supermarket. According to mom in law there wouldn’t be many people in China going to the countryside to spent hours on a field picking some strawberries and then paying for them. Later on my wife told me that her parents had never done anything like this before so I guess it was a nice first day in Finland for them.
On a side note: I did not collect even a single strawberry as I was more content filming everything and furthermore my father in law seemed to overcome parts of his OCD as he even touched one of our rabbits, he has not touched a single animal in a long long time.
Crazy Chinese Family 
Haha love the post! it really sums up how skeptic most Asians are when it comes to foreign “things” and traditions. I love going to the strawberry fields! You just gave me a great idea of what I can do with my In-laws 🙂
Great post! It sounds like you all had an amazing time picking strawberries! There are a lot of strawberry farms here in Taiwan with the same concept – pick your own and pay for them but I wouldn’t dare eat them without cleaning them!! Sounds like your father-in-law had a great time and it was a little personal victory for him!! 🙂
I can definitely see why strawberry picking appeals to Asians who live in Asia. One, there are hardly ever any strawberry fields in this region. And secondly, as you father in law has alluded, it is much cleaner and less polluted in Western countries. There is just something very comforting about picking fruits with your own hands – is is like finding something and claiming it your own. I don’t know about other Asians, but my Asian mum gets very happy when she sees 20cents on the ground – and rushes to pick it up and calls it her own.
Briefly, one of the activities my dad insisted we did when we visited Melbourne for a holiday (back when we were still living in Singapore) was that we went fruit picking in the hills 🙂
It seems rushing for some 20 cents is another thing mothers do. I have witnessed multiple occasions when both my own mother and my mom in law try to hunt down some coins.
I never though much of picking berries before. In my youth my family went often to the countryside so my mum could make juice, jam, pies etc. Now in our summercottage we have the forrest full of blueberries (blueberry pie!). But it really seems that Asian do like picking them. I remember last summer my parents in law wanted to pick blueberries, lingon berries and cloudberries which all grow around our cottage (for themselves and their friends in China). I guess next time I go with them again to pick berries 🙂