It’s June and strawberries are in full swing. There’s nothing like fresh-picked strawberries that you can pop into your mouth. With school out of session, these days are filled with outdoor activities, food, and fun.
In the Turkish highlands of Sapanca, we went strawberry picking. There are fewer homes there, and there are numerous fruit trees along the road—as well as chickens! It’s incredible. We recently relocated to this area and couldn’t be happier to be leaving our previous neighborhood of Izmit.
If you’re not familiar, Izmit is known among Turks as the “New Jersey” of Turkey. It is for people who do not want the crowds of Istanbul but yet need convenient access to flights and other vital retail international stores that other cities do not offer.
Izmit is also an industrial city. I’m referring to the golden clouds that cover the sky. I was always sick there. However, we soon found the perfect location to prolong our stay in Turkey and that’s Sapanca.
This place has mountains filled with trees, houses, and very few massive apartment structures. We, as a family, can picture our family prospering here for as long as we want.
We discovered this lovely strawberry-picking farm after relocating. Unlike the strawberry fields back home, which had strawberry beds in rows on the ground, the strawberry farm we visited had raised beds.
When you get there, they hand you a basket and a pair of small scissors. You pick as much as you want. The price in the end came to 95 Turkish lira which came to $3.65. Not bad at all. They charge 50 Turkish lira per kilo which equals to $1.92.
We ate half of our basket there while sitting at the picnic tables drinking tea, we served some to our guests that night, and the leftovers will be used to make a strawberry coconut drink my girls love.
