2007-03-04
strawberry fields forever
Driving south on US-1, the roads are clogged with billboards:
Hydrocooled Green Beans, Bingo, Marine Supply Depot, Time to Weed and Feed.
In the backseat, I watch the windows. Plastic lawn chairs perched near a canal. A satellite dish bolted to a blue house. Shopping carts glinting in tall grass. I spy tangled nests on telephone poles. Oceans of sawgrass like a postcard of Africa. Clouds stamping the skies like sneakerprints.
At Knaus Berry Farm in Homestead, you can pick your own fruit in the fields. The air smells sticky and sweet, like the strawberries boiled by the sun.
I peeked at baby plants-in-the-making: tomatoes sweating on the vine, and crates of black soil.
The farmers aren't Amish, but everybody calls them that, due to their bonnets and aprons, the men in thick beards.
Best of all, their strawberry shakes taste like seasons changing. I can almost pretend that it's summer.
Knaus Berry Farm
15980 SW 248th Street
Homestead, FL 33031-2060
f-i-n at 12:45 p.m.