Photo courtesy of The Heart of Ontario (theheartofontario.com)

When I was a kid, my mother had one rule when we went to pick strawberries at Springridge Farms. Eat a strawberry, put a strawberry in the basket. We ran that ratio every summer. It was the only math I ever did voluntarily. Eating warm strawberries and sour cherries right off the plant just hits differently.

This year my mother asked if we could all go back. Not just us and the kids, her and my father too, three generations, so my parents could watch their grandkids do the thing we used to do. I was genuinely excited to watch them go back in time before my eyes. I warned them it had changed, that they put in a playground and blew out the market, but nobody cared. We were going for the memory, not the strawberries.

Here is the part I forgot to warn them about. You can't really pick anymore. Pick-your-own is basically gone. What's left is a market full of jams and spreads and home decor, and a playground that runs $14 a head, and that head count includes the adults, even though half the structures have a sign telling you you're too big to go in. So you pay to stand next to a plastic tube and watch.

It rained the whole time. Lightly, the kind that doesn't send you home but soaks you by lunch. The kids loved it anyway. The old tactics all on display. Industrial slides, tricycles under a big pergola, a tractor ride where a guy shows you where they keep the bees. The food is made in house and it's honestly great.

And still. The one thing that made the place magic when I was a kid is the exact thing they now stop you from doing. There's no more pick-your-own strawberries or cherries here. And honestly, anywhere you go now, if you do pick your own, someone walks the row to make sure none of it reaches your mouth. My childhood scam is now a policy violation. It feels less like a farm and more like a very polite labour camp that you pay to participate in.

Neeks

Dads corner

Ghostwriter for the 8 PM Slot

A few weeks ago I heard someone talking about bedtime stories, and it stuck with me. I'm not a good storyteller. Never have been. Making one up on the spot, every night, is just not a thing I'm good at.

So instead of getting better at it, I built something. You give it a few details about your kid and the kind of story you want, and it emails you a one-page story every night before bed, ready to read out loud.

Full disclosure, I made it myself, so I'm biased. And yes, the story is AI-written. But you're still the one reading it. It doesn't tuck anyone in. It just means you walk in with a story instead of a blank page and a kid waiting on you.

It's not live yet. I'll drop the link the second it is.

Try it: https://dadsjustwannahavefun.com/storyteller