We had a BERRY good day

The boys and I made plans to drive Russ' truck to Oberlin to pick up the cattle trailer.  We need it to bring Stryker to the sale.  I'll talk more about that escapade tomorrow.  We loaded up fishing poles, drinking water, and a sack of fresh dug potatoes to bring to my Mom and Dad and we hit the road.

We arrived in Oberlin at the farm in about 30 minutes and Mom & Dad were there with five of my sister's six boys.  I got out a sling blade and cleaned up an area on the bank of the pond and the boys fished for a while.  They didn't get any bites, but had a great time with a BB gun shooting snakes and turtles swimming in the pond.  I remember doing the exact same thing 35 years ago or so in the same exact spot.  Whoa, is my math right?  I think it is - unfortunately.

After the boys were out of BBs, we got a bucket and all went blackberry picking.  What a sight to see.  Seven boys picking blackberries, depositing most of them in little mouths stained black from eating them.  The few that weren't eaten on the spot were collected in a Sonic cup, hands, and baseball caps turned upside down and then were poured into the community bucket, which happened to be a cat food container.  (We make do with what we've got.)


Blackberries

When I was a little boy we foraged around the same fence rows picking blackberries.  The blackberry bushes have stickers that will tear you up if you're not careful.  You also have to keep a watchful eye out for wasp nests and snakes.  I remember getting stung by wasps and there was a man named Joe that worked for my dad that would spit out his chewing tobacco and put it on the wasp sting as a remedy to take away the stinging sensation.  I'm assuming the nicotine acts as a local anesthetic, maybe?  It seemed to work.  Anyway, the reward of the bounty of blackberry picking was that my great grandmother would make delicious blackberry pies with sweetdough crusts.  She'd make a 'white sauce' to pour on top of the pie that was absolutely delicious.  Any blackberries left over would be frozen, except my great grandmother didn't us ziploc bags.  She would freeze them in Evangeline Maid bread bags.

One other thing about this treat that I recall is that me, my brother, my sister and my cousin would all eat a slice or two of homemade blackberry pie with white sauce and chase it down with a cold drink.  My grandmother always had "Shasta" drinks in assorted flavors like lemon-lime, cola, grape, orange, black cherry, ginger ale, root beer, or my favorite, strawberry - we called it Pop Rouge.  On a hot summer day the drinks would be sooo cold because of these aluminum drinking glasses that my grandmother had:

You would drop a few ice cubes in those bad boys and they would make the drink so cold that your lips would practically stick to the aluminum cup when you tried to drink from it.  Did any of you have these cups?  Man I remember those things.  After eating a piece of pie and drinking an ice cold Pop Rouge, you were good to go again and could go back outside and run around until you were good and sweaty and tired. We didn't need 'Energy Drinks' back in those days.  Well, I guess the sugar in the sodas effectively gave us the same rush.  

Here is a good shot of my sister's little boy (We'll call him Huck Finn) after a big day of blackberry picking and eating.  He was a very dedicated picker and eater.  If he's smile, his purple tongue would attest to this.



Huck Finn with a bucket of fresh picked blackberries

We got the cattle trailer home and as I was walking in I saw a red ripe strawberry on one of our strawberry plants.  I picked it to bring inside to wash it and eat it.

Strawberry

Good thing I turned it over before popping it in my mouth.  A slug was enjoying my strawberry.



Someone beat me to it!

You gotta act fast around here.  If you aren't on your toes, there are numerous birds, slugs, bugs and other critters that will gladly eat the fruits of your labors.


Where's that salt shaker?

All in all though, it was a BERRY good day!