Strawberry picking and farm visits with kids around Los Angeles

March through June is strawberry season in Southern California, and the farms are at their greenest. Los Angeles doesn't have Seattle-style blueberry patches in town: the strawberry fields are in Orange County and Ventura County, 50 minutes to an hour-plus away, so we picked farms where you can also feed animals, ride a tractor and fill a whole morning.

The classic is Tanaka Farms in Irvine: a tractor wagon takes you out to the rows, you eat as you pick, then feed the goats and buy strawberry desserts at the farm stand; weekend tours sell out online. Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark lets you pick year-round, and in spring the strawberries, animal center and farm play area fill three hours or more. To save money, Amy's Farm in Ontario is free to enter, a bag of feed buys an hour with the cows and goats, and the fields have seasonal u-pick vegetables; Centennial Farm in Costa Mesa is completely free, with huge pigs and a vegetable garden a 2-year-old can't get enough of, and it's on the way to Tanaka.

• 4 places
• 2 free
• 4 stroller-friendly
• closest is 35 min away