It’s me against the birds. Every once in a while, I find a ripe raspberry that’s been half-eaten and I know they’ve been there, but most of the time I pull off the plump, juicy berries first. I go out collecting every day. It’s become a little daily ritual, my walk around the farm to all my spots. While I’m walking, I look for new spots–and sometimes I find them! I’ve found more raspberry patches than I ever imagined the day I found what I thought was just one patch by the driveway. I found more along the driveway, then I found them up by the house, below the driveway, and across the road.

I’ve gotten better at finding them along the sunny edges of the woods, and also better at identifying the new canes shooting up first-year growth. I know where more raspberries will be next year.

The raspberry-palooza is stunning. I’m obsessed with the raspberries! And where I find raspberries, I often find blackberries, too. But now, it’s raspberry time and they are going to peak soon. There are still many raspberries not yet ready, but I think they will be mostly done in another week or so.

Just in time for blackberry season. The blackberries are starting to show a hint of color. They will be ripening next month.

I’m actually starting to think I will collect enough raspberries for a straight raspberry jam. I have four cups now. I figured up a per-cup berry jam recipe so I can make jam with however many raspberries and blackberries I get. See it here: Berry Jam (By the Cup).

I’m getting bolder as my obsession grows. I collect raspberries high. I collect raspberries low. No ripe berry is left behind. I leap to raspberries along cliffs.

I clamber up banks and climb into underbrush and through trees.

You have to get down in there because sometimes the berries are hiding.

I hear the phone ringing back at the house and I don’t care. I’m collecting raspberries.

One of my favorite new patches is a huge sprawling patch of both raspberries and blackberries below the driveway, between the driveway and the sheep pasture (Frank’s field). There’s about a six-foot steep bank dropping off from the driveway down to a run that drains into our creek. On the other side of the run, the ground slopes down to the fence and the field beyond. I walk along the fence, reaching across the ditch to the berries growing along the steep bank.

The sheep will think it’s funny if I fall in. Or not notice, because sheep don’t care much about people. Unless you are carrying a feed bucket.

Someone asked on a previous post if these might be wineberries. Wineberries can be distinguished from raspberries by the reddish hairs on wineberry canes. These are old-fashioned wild black raspberries that are growing on our farm. I haven’t seen any wineberries here. We’ve discovered a few more raspberry patches along the road to our farm (and haven’t looked too hard there, so there are probably more), but these patches I’m finding on our farm were likely pre-existing and disrupted by the construction a few years ago–or carried down the road here by the birds.

The flora is exploding on our farm this year. Before the disruption of our construction three years ago, there had been a previous disruption by loggers when this farm was selectively timbered a few years before we bought it. Our driveway was built by the loggers, and the location of our house was a large cleared area used as a staging ground by the loggers who actually spread and graded, widening the area, which provided space for our garden and goat yard in front of our house. (If all this sounds confusing, remember that I have a Farm Map.) The wide cleared swaths out past the duck ‘n’ buck yard and out through BP-land were logging roads.

Because of the loggers, the hillside behind our house was also disrupted quite a bit before we got here and added to the general disruption. I’ve been planting ramps back there for the past three years and I am suddenly realizing this year that I have no idea how I’ll even find my ramps next year. The forest is bursting in West Virginia verdant abundance. I am perhaps trading ramps for raspberries. Next year, I’ll start planting ramps more mindful of the oncoming near-tropical explosion.

When I get all the way down the driveway in my raspberry collecting each day, I look up the driveway and barely recognize the entrance to our farm because of the growth.

Things are starting to look not only settled but well-established. My daily walks amongst the berries are a chance to notice, and to enjoy.

I walk along the precarious path between the bank below the driveway and the sheep pasture, reaching-reaching-reaching for my little treasures, and I think, I’m picking wild raspberries on my farm!

And I don’t even know which part of that last sentence is the most awesome.

Posted by Suzanne McMinn on June 25, 2011  

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