Socially Distanced Strawberry Picking

Little E is very fond of Strawberry Picking. Her first visit was with her nursery where she ate more strawberry’s than she took home. In 2018 we visited McLauchlans of Boxted for our first family visit. This year Little E requested another visit to pick strawberries. I follow McLauchlans on social media and they have been offering socially distanced strawberry picking. On Sunday it was finally our turn to visit.

Socially Distanced Strawberry Picking At McLauchlans

To help with social distancing McLauchlans of Boxted introduced a ticketing system so you could pick your own this year. Issuing tickets helps to reduce numbers and space out arrivals during the day. These tickets are free and proved to be very popular. This meant they booked up very quickly even though the tickets became available in waves. I signed up for their newsletter as this would inform you as and when tickets were released. A few weeks ago an email came in just as I woke up and I was able to book tickets for the Sunday after Little E’s birthday.

Our Strawberry Picking Experience

We didn’t tell the children we were going strawberry picking until we were getting ready to leave. Ethan is really missing his routine and we find this is what works best at the moment. Having also visited McLauchlans before we knew we wouldn’t need to do anything to visually prepare him.

On arrival, the empty punnets are ready for you to collect the size you want. There is also a hand sanitizer that they ask you to use before you proceed into the pick your own areas. You also don’t need to print out your tickets or even have the email ready to show as they have your names down on a list.

We were directed to the strawberry picking area where another colleague greeted us. They talked us through the available strawberries and where we should start picking. We only picked up one punnet this time as on our last visit it took the children quite some time to fill them up.

We reminded the children to only pick the red strawberries and with that, they were off. It took them a few attempts not to squish the strawberry they were picking. They quickly worked it out without their fingers getting too sticky!

Ethan was a different boy this year. He still used the rows of strawberries as hurdles but he purposely looked through the strawberry plants to find the red strawberries on his own.

Little E was in her strawberry picking element. We did have to remind her to not eat the strawberries and place them in the punnet.

I’m so glad I managed to get us some tickets to visit McLauchlans again this year. It will definitely be on our bucket list next year.