Berry Pickin'

Imagine my surprise when I said I'd like to go pick wild black caps and black berries...and my husband said that he'd go with.

I gave him a look and said... 'What, you'll come and watch?.. and keep and eye out for the Bear?'

He shook his head. 'Nope, I like picking berries.'

I was floored. Totally. I didn't think berry pickin' was a man thing. But hey I shouldn't complain right? This was a second pair of hands.

So at noon we left with a thermos of ice water, the dog [Morris] and some pickin' pails that were actually plastic coffee cans rigged to hang off our shoulders. And picking is what we did.

[Even Morris who eats them right off the briar]
We did discover an incredible berry patch though.

Wild yellow raspberries!

They were so tall that we couldn't reach the top of the canes to pick, but had to carefully pull them down to us to get the delicious fruit.

The berry patch was surrounded by a fallen cherry tree, wild grapes, horse nettles, and some black berries on one side.

The patch was thick as could be. My old long sleeved shirt suffered many small tears from the muti flora rose and the old berry canes.

Our take? 2 1/2 gallons of black berries.
1 1/2 gallons of yellow berries.

I cleaned them and crushed them into portions when I got home and froze them. Today's work will yield me 4 lucious batches of black and yellow berry jam, two pies, and several bowls of tasty berries to eat.

I'm so glad that berry pickin' is a Man Thing too.