Berry Picking
Last year, smoke from Colorado wildfires blocked the view of the mountains, the creek was dry, and the grass never grew or turned green. Last year there were no berries.
This year, the creek is running, the grass is high, and the wildflowers are incredible. But the best part right now? The berries.
The grandchildren exclaim as though they’re searching for Easter eggs.
“I found some!”
“Me too! Look how big this one is!”
“Is this one ripe enough, Grandma?”
Some of the berries make it into the bucket, some don’t.
“Oooohhh that was sour!”
Berry-stained grins stretch from ear to ear.
You’ve gotta love berry picking.
The first time I remember picking berries was when my grandmother sent me out the back door to gather currants to eat with my corn flakes for breakfast. The next time we went to visit, I scoured the bushes with great expectation looking for the plump black-purple treats, but they weren’t there. I didn’t realize that berries have a season, and a short one at that.
When my family moved to the country a few years later, we found currants growing beside the irrigation ditch. My brothers and I would stand in the shallow water during the hot July afternoons and pick them. We’d sing funny songs as we each tried to fill our buckets the deepest.
Finding currants beside the creek of the property my husband and I settled on rekindled those memories, and a hunger for homemade jelly on my mom’s homemade bread. (Click here to find the recipe in my blog on baking bread So naturally we took our kids berry picking, too. We’d traipse down the hill with our buckets and our Chesapeake Bay Retriever bouncing through the bushes, searching and picking until we ran out of time or berries.
Here’s the thing about berries. Either it’s a good year for berries, or it’s not. There isn’t really anything we can do to grow them out here. They are either there, or not. Conditions have to be right.
But there are tricks to finding them. You have to be able to recognize the lobed leaves of the currant bushes to identify them. On our property, we have both red and black currants. The red currants are often small, but they cover the bush, and are easier to find, because the leaves on the bushes are smaller, too.
The black ones like to hide, and the thorns are tricky. But if you do it just right, you can grasp the leaves at the end of the branch and lift it without the thorns poking you. You’ll find berries hanging under the leaves like jewels hanging in Aladdin’s cave.
I know that somewhere there are varieties of currants that don’t have thorns. But ours all do. Finding the precious berries is worth a few pokes.
And you have to know when it’s time to harvest. If you aren’t on the lookout, the birds will get to them before you do, and they will be gone, overnight.
All this for jelly?
No.
It’s not about the jelly. The picking, the washing, and the whole canning process takes time. Hours and hours. Possibly more than even the best-tasting jelly is worth.
It’s about the experience. Harvesting the goodness of earth’s bounty holds a completely different type of satisfaction than picking a jar of jelly off the shelf at the local supermarket.
It’s the feel of the cool water running over our feet as we pick, the laughter of the children, the bounce of the dog through the bushes—all present in the mix of sweet and tang as we spread it on a thick slab of warm-from-the-oven bread. It’s about finding the sweetness surrounding us.
We smack our lips in anticipation and grin.
Maybe berry-picking isn’t your thing. Maybe, living where you are, there are no creeks or currant bushes. But I’m betting you have that one thing. That one heart-warming thing that helps you to know it’s summer, and winter is far away. That something that fills you with the assurance of how rich life can be.
Maybe it’s a nice glass of lemonade while you sit on your apartment balcony and read your favorite story. Or a picnic in the park. Maybe it’s listening to your favorite band while you sit out on the deck at night and count the stars. Or a backyard barbeque. Maybe it’s a sweet, juicy watermelon, or corn on the cob, or strawberry-rhubarb pie. Maybe it’s camping in the pines.
