Blackberry girl

Well, the last few days of rain have finished off the blackberry crop, which was on its last legs anyway. It’s a disappointing moment every year, but it was not always like this.

I used to kind of dislike blackberries. Besides my family doing a lot of U-pick stuff when I was growing up, I also picked berries for pay for a bit. There was a summer program where school buses would take us to different berry fields and brings us back, and we would get paid for each flat we turned in.

Those were always strawberries. I remember seeing something like a work permit application or something that mentioned caneberries, so there may have been teens picking blackberries and raspberries somewhere, but for me it was always strawberries through that location, and then I picked blueberries on the farm of a family friend.

Regardless of what and where I was doing, somehow I always ended up making about $5.00 a day. I think I could have doubled that if I had really applied myself, but for a twelve-year old in 1984 that seemed pretty good.

Blueberries were definitely my favorite. With strawberries you had to be low, so you either crouched over and killed your back, or sat in the dirt and got filthy. Also, there were stickers growing between the strawberry plants. With blueberries you could stand, and maybe a branch would poke you every now and then, but it was relatively injury-free, and also, blueberries were always delicious.

That was part of my problem with blackberries. They could be very sweet, but sometimes they weren’t. If I had to be picking from thorny canes, at least let it be raspberries, which were tasty and I remember the thorns as being less vicious, but I could be fooling myself. Also, I did not like blackberry jam, only strawberry and raspberry (blueberries were for pie).

This all changed by accident. It was the Fourth of July block party, and we decided to take a pie. I thought I grabbed a bag from the freezer to defrost, but the ice was thick and I had really taken out a bag of blackberries, which I didn’t even know we had. Well, what was done was done, so we just made blackberry cobbler instead.

It was so delicious. Maybe blackberries are not always sweet off the bush, but bake them with sugar and they are magically transformed. It was amazing. I guess that was when I started to think about the blackberries around the barn.

The property next to our cul-de-sac is going to be a park someday, but they have not gotten around to it yet. It was a small family farm when I was growing up. I liked to see the cows there when we went by. Where the horses used to be, there are now apartments, and where the sheep used to be, there is assisted living, but the cow pasture is still basically a pasture, and the barn is still there. It is now surrounded by blackberry bushes.

Sometimes when walking the dogs or something, neighbors would call over the fences telling me I could pick them, and it was fine. I didn’t think about it much, but now I had motivation.

It has become kind of a special experience for me. Oddly, I have never been unemployed during blackberry season (just before, and then something comes up while they are ripening), so I always have to find moments here and there for it, but it is time I enjoy. It becomes kind of meditative for me, and educational.

First of all, the reason the berries are not always sweet is they look ripe sooner than they are ripe. You know if they are ready by the feel as you pull on them. Ripe berries slip off of their caps easily. Not yet ripe, and they cling. (Overripe and they squish.) You have to listen to the berry.

Secondly, the thorns are there, but the navigating around them, then that pull that tells you if the fruit is ready, plus being outside, all of that leads to the meditative part. Yes, I do get stuck on a regular basis, but it’s not really that bad. Or maybe I just feel that way now because for the last fourteen years we have had a ferocious cat. The cats we had back when I was a kid, not so much.

Also, and this could just be my imagination, but it seems to me that if you pick more, they produce more, and I am kind of impressed by that. It seems very generous of the berries.

I also started to have other feelings, which I am sure were at least partially brought on by the economic hard times we have had. Fresh fruits and vegetables can be so expensive, and here was all this good fruit for free, but so much of it was going to waste.

I am not the only one who picks there, but there is still so much more than ever gets used. I was stretching our food dollar, which was great, and despite the pie experience we were often just eating them straight, as fresh fruit, but it just made me more aware of food waste and nutrition issues.

The house is still being rented, and that area is fenced off. On the other side of the fence there is a pear tree, and often while I was picking berries I would hear pears plopping off the tree, too ripe to stay. The family renting the house could have picked them, but they didn’t.

As I walk around more, I have discovered a plum tree that started dropping like crazy, and they lay in the street and quickly turned to fruit leather, stinking, and useless. They’re on road so it doesn’t even become compost, and I hate that waste because I know it could be much better. Okay, if it’s too much fruit for you, give it away. Aren’t there gleaners around or something?

So yes, I sound a little politically sensitized there, but in general the activity is peaceful, and so I have some regret when the fruit goes away, and I never know exactly when they will develop the park and the vines will go away.

I know those vines get rooted in deep, and so they are a pest for a lot of people who get blackberries on their property, but I will never be able to see them that way.


28 minutes walking outside
Rest
Luke 19 – John 2