Blackberry picking time
Memories of Grandma
We made it back from the Lake today, only to find that the Mudlucious Flower Garden was suffering, particularly those most recently planted, like the purple cone flower and the hydrangea. So watering was the first priority.
My good neighbor George came over and we chatted a bit while I tried to revive the almost moribund Purple Cone Flower that I had planted way too late. What was I thinking?
Then we noticed that the blackberries were ripening quickly! A quick rinse off with the water hose and WOW those berries were great! I warned George, “These are the early blackberries. They’re pretty seedy.”
But the flavor is intense. Highly recommended! Small but sweet.
Picking wild berries today reminded me of picking berries for my grandmother on the Farm as a little boy. She lived in Seneca County, Ohio near Bascom. Sometimes my Sister and I would stay with her for a few days in the summer. She was born in 1892. She gave me an 1892 Indian Head penny so I would always remember. Of course I still have it.
Grandma would send us berrypicking along the particular fence rows she knew had berries. It was great adventure! Big hairy black spiders with an orange hourglass on their back, sitting in the middle of a huge dewey web, would sometimes block our path. We pretty much always walked around them as far as I can remember.
A flock of wild canaries (what we called goldfinches back then) would go winging by, looking for a thistle patch. Usually the only berries that made it back to Grandma were Elderberries. If there were blackberries we pretty much ate them. When we got back we dutifully reported that the berries were “still pretty thin.” Our stained faces and hands may have told a different tale.
I can still remember the smell of her fresh apron.
There were always cookies and milk and games to play, even on rainy days.
The Milk Truck driver would sometimes throw us a few candy suckers as he drove down the lane to collect the milk from the few Jerseys my uncle still milked.
There are no fence rows anymore. Instead every inch is farmed. And there are no farms with a few Jerseys or Guernseys or Brown Swiss. You may see a few Holsteins, but not like we used to.
We played a game called “Oskeewawa” on the way to Grandma‘s house. One team got one side of the road and the other team took the other. You counted cows on your side of the road. If you saw a cemetery on the other team’s side of the road, you yelled “Oskeewawa!!!“ and the team on the cemetery side lost all their cows. We were quite entertained. There were lots of little farms back then, and every little farm had a few cows.
I’m pretty sure the blackberries taste the same today as they did back then. Better get them picked before the birds do!
This was a lovely memory. I mean it's your memory but your words convey it,so I felt like I'd lived it,in a way. My own memory of blackberry picking is of me and my sister and little brother going with my Mum out to the Common and picking a good buckeful of blackberries from the clumps that dotted the common. We took a big bucket and a hooked stick because the biggest and best ones of course are the ones out of reach. I think USA took a wrong turn circa 1950 when they used finance in ways too complex for my brain,to put all the small farms out of business and make farming a Corporate Enterprise. The French had the much better idea IMO of telling the USA "Non" and keeping their small,unproductive,loss making,unprofitable, in efficient and utterly charming tiny family farms so people could stay in the land thatd been in their families for hundreds of years and so France could stay distinctively French. Of course being along with Germany the co-founders of the European Union they wrote the rules to suit themselves,very sensible too I think. The fact that the EU farm laws disadvantaged British farmers in so far as they had to some extent and with Government backing adopted the USA model was a point of contention right from the start. I think the French had and have the right idea. They put people first. Sorry,bit of a diversion from Blackberries,ours are still flowering. It will be another month yet