What I Learned About Life From Berry-Picking

When I was a pre-teen, we moved out of the city to a rural acreage. We did this because my brother had died tragically at 19 in a car accident, and my mother couldn’t bear living in the house where he’d been raised. It was meant to be a fresh start for our family, and it was full of new adventures. The first thing that happened was that my sister and I got horses. The property housed a large dog kennel operation, which we inherited. It became the focus of our lives for the next seven years.

Between the horses and working in the kennel operation of 12 breeds that totaled 200 dogs and about 50 new puppies each month, we ended up working from before dawn ’til after sunset most days in order to get our chores done before and after school and other extracurricular activities. My little sister Melinda swam, played basketball and the clarinet. I danced and took organ and cello lessons. I also swam, but athletic dominance wasn’t my destiny. I was klutzy and accident prone, and really not built for speed. Looking back I realize that a lot of this activity was probably meant to keep us as busy as possible.

Summer berries

Of course it was a great blessing.  In the summers an important activity became hand-harvesting the plentiful sandhill plums and currants that grew wild across the 20 acres of prairie behind the house and kennel. Mom made sand hill plum jelly that looked like champagne in a jar and tasted like heaven. Dad made sand hill plum and currant wine, both of which he “fortified” with vodka, which could really undo unsuspecting visitors who thought they were just having a garden-variety glass of vino.

Picking currants and plums was not a chore I liked (does anyone, really?). I had to psyche myself up to put on the required gear, which was jeans, a long sleeved shirt with a collar and boots. I wore my cowboy boots because I’d catch my palomino Bill (no I did not name him), and we’d ride out to the patches in the steamy heat of Kansas July days. Bill would hang out munching on grass while I went to work. Even with as much of my body covered as possible there was no getting around getting scratches that made a person look like they’d been in a catfight.  Picking berries requires a certain combination of gentleness and firmness, and you can’t do it with gloves on. (NOTE: There are berry-picking gloves out there you can buy, but I’ve never tried them.  And there are a multitude of home-made versions, including the ever-popular kitchen rubber gloves with the fingertips cut off.)

I’d typically return with  two full gallon buckets a couple of hours later, handles laced to either side of the back of the saddle. I’d be sweaty, sore, exhausted and, of course, beaten up, but all in all learned to consider them afternoons well spent.  I often made up song lyrics, or thought great thoughts, or watched nature on my missions.  The effort and pain of the work became just part of doing business. I did like to eat sandhill plum jelly or currant jam on toast for breakfast. I can still taste that jelly…a flavor I’ve never found duplicated.

Return to childhood

Fast forward a few decades (never mind exactly how many). In the past few years I’ve been blessed to live in a place where we had first wild raspberries, and now, blackberries. Out picking this morning, these thoughts came to me about the grand metaphor associated with harvest, for me, specific to berry-picking. Here’s what I realized I’d learned from childhood picking.

1.  Abundance. I’ve read other stories about berry picking, and many people refer to that ever-tantalizing scenario: The most plump, ripe, juicy blackberries always seem to be just out of reach–hanging in giant bunches just behind that curtain of thorny first-year

   canes, or in a heavy canopy higher than you can reach. If you’re really ambitious once you’ve harvested what’s closest, you can pack an appropriate weapon (typically a mid-size pruning shear) and hack away those non-fruit-bearing branches of hell and work your way in (slowly and carefully) toward the additional harvest. But no matter what, you can never pick all the berries. There will always be ripe berries missed that fall to the ground and rot, or get picked by birds…or are just forever out of reach.  The berry-lesson for me: There is such abundance around us;  abundance beyond that which we can immediately grasp. With this knowledge, a person can relax in the faith that there will always be enough.

2. Perspective. When I walk down the blackberry row I pick everything I can reach that’s ripe. When I think I’ve covered it,  I turn around and walk back. Coming from that different angle, I see a wall of berries that somehow were invisible to me walking the other direction. It never ceases to amaze me, and so traversing both up and down the row has become a habit. It reminds me to always look for other points of view even though I’m sure the way I currently see something is the truth.
3. Opportunity.  When the season arrives you can start seeing the tiny buds, then flowers and then kernels of fruit start to emerge weeks before it’s ready to pick. If you’re watching, you see the opportunity. You have a choice: You can take on the work and reap the reward, watch others do it, or simply ignore the berry-fest and let them rot on the vine.  But honestly, blackberry crisp doesn’t taste nearly as good if you didn’t pick the berries; and it tastes amazing if you didn’t…so, you do the math of awesomeness. My fruity take-away: For those who are willing to see and take on opportunity–do the work, endure the suffering, gain from the pain–there is a great and sweet reward unlike those who simply partake of life’s fruits that are handed to them.
4. Humility. Blackberries aren’t the only fruit that protects itself with obstacles – chiggers and mosquitoes used to infest our currant and plum bushes in Kansas in addition to the thorny thatches that tried to bar entrance. No matter how careful you are, you will be pricked and scarred when berry picking. Even the most experienced of us can’t escape it entirely. Every sharp sting reminds me that nothing worth having in life comes easily; that people suffer every day, and that compassion for myself and others is essential. At the heart of compassion lies humility. Whoever invented the phrase eating humble pie must’ve been a berry-picker.

Rewards of berries

The price is worth it, for such glorious spoils as these.  A blackberry crisp that, with vanilla ice cream, is as summer as summer gets. With the amounts frozen, we’ll be able to enjoy them whenever we want through the other seasons until a new crop arrives next year.

My recipe uses almond meal instead of flour, coconut oil instead of butter, Stevia instead of white sugar, and extra amounts of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. I can’t get away from some brown sugar, but with all that, this version is as healthy as dessert can get and still melt in your mouth. <Sigh> My kingdom for a blackberry crisp…

So, for your pickin’ and bakin’ pleasure, listen to this sweet traditional melody, where a young gent picks more than a berry (!).

And, why not: Here’s my recipe and a picture of what it looks like all dressed up. Enjoy the fruits of your labour and ponder all the lessons berry picking teaches you.

Ask & you shall receive…