It's coming to the end of summer!! So naturally, the must do activity is going for a fruitpicking. My bestie and I have been yearning to go since Ramadhan and finally got a chance to go with some other friends.
We chose to go to the Parkside Farm in Enfield. You just need to buy a ticket to Potters Bar and take train. From Potters Bar station, you need to take the 313 bus towards Chingford and stop at Roundhedge Way. This place is still in London, so you can use oyster for the bus, but not the train. From the bus stop, it's only 5 minutes walk to the farm. There are signage from the bus stop, so look out for them.
As we arrived, we picked up the map/leaflet located at the entrance. This place is open 6 days a week, and closed on Mondays as you can see. There are various choices of fruits and veges to pick from.
The price range are stated at the entrance as well. So you can budget how much you will spend. The arrow shows the minimum spending per person (adult and child) which is £3. The price is quite cheap if you compare it with the ones in the supermarket. Plus, they are organic and fresh!
The culprits that went to the farm with me. There are others that already went inside.
You don't have to pay to enter. Only pay the amount of fruit that you have picked on your way out. As you enter, you'll see this girly here with all sorts of basket and plastic. The basket are for fruits and plastics are for the veges. They're free to take as many as you can handle. There's trolley as well if you're planning to harvest the whole farm. =P
This farm is huuuuggee! The first that you'll see are strawberries and cherry tomatoes. I wasn't really keen to pick strawberries 'coz heck, you can do that in Malaysia.
We wanted to pick fruits that can't be found back home. Some of the crops, you'll see these signs. The fruits were just being planted on these crops.
The name came from the loch ness monster (according to me). haha...the berries don't look like loch ness, fyi.
Look at all those fresh juicy berries!! I feel like the chipmunk when I see these. Don't ask me why.
Time for some veggies...the spinach is sooo big!
Next target were the plums!! You would think plums will be sour as the sour plum sweets that we used to eat when we were little. But they're not. It's sweet as can be! However, there aren't many left, so we got the half riped ones. But these plums ripe pretty quickly. It's not even a week yet since we picked them and they're all very ripe already. Some people even took the time to climb up to get the riped ones on top. If there were no one, I would've done the same. haha
To the next part of the farm. Through here, are mostly raspberries. I don't really like them because they are sour. I don't like anything sour, so we just spent time here to have our lunch under the shades of the bushes.
Further inside the farm, were a whole lot more!!
If you have the energy you can explore the whole area. We were already quite tired, plus the heat wasn't helping. So we just picked some beans on the way to the corn field.
It has been my bestie's dream to go to a corn field (weird dream). hahaha...It's not as tall as in the movies though, but close enough. They call it sweetcorn and let me tell you, they sure do uphold the name. Most of the visitors ate these things raw inside the farm (eventhough you're not supposed to do that). We tried some the next day at our friend's house and it was sweet even without adding anything.
There were loads of these fat and big ones to pick from.
Children of the corn? My bestie won't know this reference. LOL
After sweating our way through the farm, we head back towards the exit to pay. On our way, we drop by the cherry tomatoes section.
At the counter, they'll weigh your crops and pay according to how much you take. They also sold some homemade ice cream and cold drinks to make your summer trip here wonderful. Such a nice weather for ice cream too!
It was worth coming here I think. We spent about £11 each for a month worth of fruits and veggies.
Until next time...Go organic!
