Strawberry shortcake: Make this now, while you still can.
Strawberry shortcake: Make this now, while you still can.

“I have only to break into the tightness of a strawberry,” wrote Toni Morrison in The Bluest Eye, “and I see summer—its dust and lowering skies.” It’s been more than twenty years since I read that book, but the strawberry line has always stuck with me. It’s one of the moments when I began to understand that a bite of food can evoke an entire season, that memories and emotions can have a taste. To this day, strawberry season—so sweet, so cruel, and so fleeting—makes me swoon.

Local strawberries are here. Actually, they’ve been here—unseasonably early—for about three weeks now. Because of the atypically warm spring (thanks, climate change?) local berries ripened unusually fast.

“This year, we started picking in mid-May,” says Alexa Flem of Schuh Farms in Mount Vernon, Washington. “Usually we don’t start until late May or early June.”

While it’s exciting to have strawberries so soon, the early start doesn’t mean we’ll have berries any longer than usual. “Sometimes we’ll have berries until the Fourth [of July], but this year they’ll probably be done by Father’s Day,” says Flem.

Today is June 9; Father’s Day is June 21. In other words, get your strawberries now. Local supermarkets like Metropolitan Market stock fresh farm berries, but you can get more for your money if you buy them direct from farms such as Schuh, Hayton, and Growing Washington at farmers’ markets around town (if you buy them in half flats or whole flats, you’re likely to get a deal). Or even better: Consider heading out to a local farm where you can pick your own. (Here’s a list, organized by counties around the state.)

Picking strawberries yourself is a good reminder of the work that goes into growing and harvesting them—which feels especially important in light of the ongoing labor dispute between Skagit Valley farmworkers and local growers Sakuma Brothers Farms, which sells both locally and to larger companies like Driscoll's. (Last year, farmworkers reached an $850,000 settlement with Sakuma over unpaid wages and breaks. This year, they are still picketing and trying to negotiate a contract while Sakuma announced it is closing its retail and u-pick operations for the 2015 season.)

Unlike Morrison, I prefer my strawberries without any tightness. I like them when they are a deep, crimson red and dangerously close to being overripe—a berry should be so soft that it yields easily to just your tongue and should taste sweet, dark, and boozy.

You can certainly bake the berries into pies, tarts, and biscuits, but I am a reluctant baker and can never quite bring myself to cook my strawberries. Instead, I make strawberry shortcake, which along with being very simple, can be made in less than half an a hour.

First, make some drop biscuits (I use this easy recipe from Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, which requires just six ingredients, and gives you fluffy, tangy biscuits every time). While they're cooling, slice two to four pints of strawberries and toss them in a bowl with one to two tablespoons of sugar. Let the berries sit and form their own delicious syrup while you whip some heavy cream. (Some people like to add a bit of sugar or vanilla extract to their whipped cream, but I think it's just fine as is.)

When the cream forms soft peaks, stop whipping. Then cut the still-warm bisuits in half and fill them with the slick, sweet berries and a big dollop of satiny whipped cream. Put the top of the biscuit back on to make a strawberry shortcake-type sandwich, then put some more berries on top. You can never have too many strawberries.