Pick Winter Strawberries at Tanaka Farms

There are many must-dos we must be doing on the average Tuesday in January.

Going to work? Check. Tending to the day-to-day needs of our family, our home, our pets, and our thousand-everything-elses? All of that.

Finally taking the Christmas lights off the front of the house? Maybe, probably, okay, fine, we're doing it.

Picking strawberries?

That isn't the first thought that a January Tuesday brings to mind. An April Saturday, sure, a Sunday in May, okay, but heading to a fruit-strong location for a day of berry selection isn't high on the list of our wintertime daily planner.

But it could be, on Tuesday, Jan. 14, for Tanaka Farms in Irvine has put out the call to all strawberry lovers: Please come pick and eat and enjoy our strawberries.

The $8 you-pick-'em deal began on Jan. 13, and it concludes on Jan. 14, and it includes the chance to "pick as many as you can eat" within a half-hour window.

Those windows? Here are the times: 10 a.m., 11 a.m., and 3:30 p.m., too.

And if you want to take those pretty red jewels home? There shall be $6 containers for purchase.

Are you going to lightly brag to your buddies who reside in colder climes that you're out picking strawberries on a winter weekday? Well, why not? They'll probably see it on your Insta, anyway.

It's not super-unusual and ultra-rare to find a bounty of from-the-ground goodies around California in the winter, but the strawberry's biggest bonanza tends to be seen closer to April and those heavenly months that immediately follow.

Some of our state's biggest strawberry festivals bloom around then, further cementing the strawberry's springtime cred (when we say "cementing" we mean cementing with delicious strawberry goo, the kind you find in pies).

So January strawberries? They just might be magic. Find them at Tanaka Farms, in Irvine, on Tuesday, Jan. 14.