My quest to eat primarily local foods – especially produce, since this is an agricultural area – got a boost this week.

I do frequently enjoy heading to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings, but this time of year, it's slim pickings – mostly flowers and the last of the winter's root veggies and some stuff left over from last year. As such, my visits are infrequent.

But the strawberries are up early this season, and so it was off to the farmer's market for me this morning. If you're in Central New York (or if you know anything about geography), you know that any strawberries eaten here between, say, October and late June, are from California. But I have a quickly disappearing basket of strawberries grown by an elderly couple in Baldwinsville.

The berries are not uniformly red. They are not uniform in size. They have varying levels of firmness. These would be no-nos in a carton of California strawberries. But of course, in that carton of California strawberries, it's hit or miss with the sweetness. You will pucker on more than one occasion. You may think you just ate a decent carton of strawberries, because you're used to being disappointed by sometimes-sour, medium-sweet berries. But these Baldwinsville berries? Holy crow. The only things that are going to stop me from eating the whole basket before lunch are the weather and the crock-pot – I have a crock-pot full of chili on the boil, and at 50 degrees, it's chili weather.

Update: Greenblade's got strawberries, too!