Time Travel

This year, I picked, by myself, 24 pounds of black raspberries. This is all time record blows past my  dream of reaching 20 pounds.

Three of these = 24 pounds

Usually Dad or a friend, or Andrew goes picking with me once for the season and whatever we get, we get. Dad isn't venturing out much these days and picking season was especially hot for him anyway.  My green thumb friend often comes along but has their own family health considerations in these times. Andrew offered to help but he's working so hard on his big summer project I didn't want to take time away from that.


Working from home has given me so much more time without the commute and coupled with it already being my weekend off on either side of the picking week, I was able to pick 8 pounds a day for three days.


So why is this entry called time travel? Well, let us travel back in time to some of my earliest food memories of a childhood full of black raspberry pies every Thanksgiving and Christmas made either by my Grandma Perdue or my Mom, and later always by Mom.


My Grandparents Perdue lived back from the road and they had a long gravel lane that ran alongside a barbed wire fence row shaded by large trees and choked with underbrush. Wooded fence rows are prime real estate for wild black raspberries.

Now all raspberries are members of the rose family and are susceptible to many of the same pests, fungi, and diseases. Wild black raspberries are found in wild places deep in the woods, shaded thickets and dense fence rows. Smaller, sweeter and seedier than their domesticated cousins, the wild berries live on thornier canes. The sweeter the berry, the sharper the thorn maybe? In these conditions long pants are a must, long sleeves are advisable, and bug spray, of the more commercial-better-not-ask-what's-in-it variety should be considered.

I remember my Grandma Perdue always had a jar of homemade black raspberry jelly open in the fridge, ready to spread on toast or put on ice cream. She canned it old school with a paraffin top under the can lid. She kept black raspberries frozen in various plastic containers to be made into pies and eaten on cereal or ice cream. I remember picking black raspberries with her along that fence row, instructed to get the ones on the bottom of the canes and to look under the leaves where, shaded, the berries grew plump.

Grandma used a wooden walking cane to press down or push away raspberry canes covered in thorns to get better access to berries without getting scratched up. The mosquitoes where always awful as we filled plastic ice cream buckets with berries.

When I think of memories of spending time with my Grandparents Perdue, especially when I spent the night, black raspberries were a feature no matter the time of year. For breakfast I had Rice Krispies cereal, something that I loved on my visits but didn't eat regularly at home. I would add a spoonful of sugar to go along with the sliced banana. I can almost hear the hiss, crackle pop, and taste the sugar grainy milk as I write this. I would have black raspberries in one of the little blue bowls I love so much, and have now in my own kitchen. And I can smell the black raspberry jam as it was spread on warm toast and sitting at their tiny kitchen table. I felt like I was dining like a king.

2020 Berries in dish I ate from in the 80's.

My Dad remembers being a kid and Grandma would have Grandpa go into the deep woods to pick wild black raspberries. There were no farms with mowed paths, no weeds and maybe a golf cart ride to the rows farther away. As the mother of five boys, Selma Perdue was cooking/cleaning/sewing/gardening/canning through the day to keep the family of 7 clean, comfortable and fed on one income. Dad recalls that Grandpa was a fast berry picker but the trade off for speed was precision. He would return with berry buckets full of raspberry cane twigs and leaves as well as berries. If Grandma complained Grandpa would remind her in the, ah, risks of outsourcing work to subcontractors, shall we say?

It's been a couple of decades since I've had wild black raspberries. I'm sure they are still out there and still as sharply delicious as the thorns they sit by and the mosquitoes that bite in the shade of the trees. I'm not sure I would accept the inconvenience for the taste these days although I could be cajoled to pick along a fence row. Now I go to a black raspberry farm where the best berries are still to be found under the leaves and the thorns will still catch your clothes or your skin.


And now, back to the present.

I don't use a walking came but I do use a leather glove on my left hand to push, pull, press, and lift canes to get the best and most berries the quickest. My right hand...well let's say I don't really feel the pain as I reach for plump berries or collect a whole ripe cluster at once. Later someone inevitably asks me what happened to my hand, and a fight with a cat is almost always the guess to give you an idea what it looks like.

 I'm sure I am a sight in the berry field. While many people are wearing shorts and tank tops because of the heat, and some are wearing jeans, I'm wearing long pants and a long sleeve shirt, both UPF 50 so I don't fry in the sun. I wear a wide brimmed hat also UPF 50 and zinc oxide based sunscreen...UPF 50.

But I'm not a quart or pint picker either. I'm an 8 pounds and two hours later picker.  I keep a small bottle of Gatorade in a roomy pocket and when I run out, that's when I stop for the day. The berries still need washed and drained and frozen after all. The work has just begun with picking. And in this present moment under the hot sun because it's around the 4th of July, I hope I get a good row and always, always suspect the next row over is better, I just KNOW it. I set about filling my tray reminding myself like a pot set to boil, it's best not to watch my progress too closely or the sun just feels hotter and the picking longer. I listen to snatches of conversation from other pickers carried by the breeze and the birds and the occasional bee. I don't ask why there aren't any mosquitoes buzzing around but am grateful for the lack of them. As sweat runs down my skin, I remember the black raspberry breakfasts at my grandparents and other memories of staying with them, a recounting for another time, keeps me moving down the row. I think about work, and family and what this blog post I will write weeks later might look like. See, I told you, time travel.

And now, to the future. Because* really most of these berries are for my future self and family and friends. Sure, I'll clean and set aside a big bowl of fresh berries to eat plain or on ice cream for the next few days. And a bowl for my parents and a bowl for my friend who usually goes picking with me but can't this year.  But* the vast majority of these berries I will freeze-not in random plastic containers like Grandma did but with a fancy vacuum sealer.

These 24 bags of black raspberries, roughly two cups in each bag will go towards pies for holidays and birthdays and maybe a couple just because days. They will go towards plain eating for a future me I haven't even met yet, and who knows what will happen between the future her and the present me? The black raspberry pie Andrew made for us at Easter? Picked in 2019 but bringing a quiet pleasure months later at a where and in a when I could have never dreamed at the time I put them in the freezer.

These berries are for plain eating too. Generally I try to be conservative in the fall, not wanting to run through too many bags too fast even after the ones for pies have been set aside. Berries for eating, thawed and with a little honey added are most treasured in the dead of winter, when blood oranges are in season at the grocery store but asparagus is not.  I almost always dig out a bag after a trip, something to ground me back home and to counter the restaurant meals, no matter how delicious, I ate on the road. I actually just opened a bag the night we returned from Michigan last week. It never really sealed right after two attempts so why let them get freezer burnt?

And sometimes they do get a little freezer burnt anyway. They lose the texture of a fresh berry where my tongue can feel every bump and the sun warmed berry feels like pure wonderful life in my mouth. I imagine it feels to me like how a favorite glass of wine, or the first tomato of the season, or the favorite apple at a local orchard might taste to others.  And* really isn't everything we grow and harvest a form of time travel? All the rain and sun and clouds and phases of the moon that preside over the seed, the blossom, the bud and the fruit? It reminds me of what Thich Naht Han says about a cloud in a cup of tea.

I picked these 24 pounds of black raspberries for myself, my family and some dear friends marveling at this strange trade-off that the year I finally meet and surpass my longed for goal of 20 pounds is done without the help I always have...and that reason is also the same reason why I am able to pick so much by myself.  I don't know what Thanksgiving or Christmas will look like this year. I can only hope those closest to me will be safe and well and of course, there will be pie.

*I know I started sentences with "because, but, and." It's my blog I do what I want.