Blackberries Are The Pot of Gold at the End of Summer

Blackberries have always been my quintessential bit of summer. When we were kids, my brother and sister and I would head into Gentle Woods Park, walking the along the creek, cutting through the branches and brambles with our feet and hands, in search of blackberry bushes. We would have more fun on the journey than actually picking. But our goal was always "enough for a pie," in kind of a survivalist, Little House on the Prairie kind of way. As if we could have no dessert, nothing for our mother to make or no treat for our father after a long days work, unless we picked these blackberries. It was the same sort of feeling of eating our Campbell's beef stew--out in the backyard playhouse--with a wooden spoon. It felt so rustic and we loved rustic, as long as there were Fudgcicles in the freezer and a comfortable bed to crawl into at night. So, we would tramp home with our berry "pails" full, and our mother was the one responsible for actually making the pie. She hated making pies. But she did it.*

I enjoy making pies, but I tend to freeze most of the berries that I pick during the summer--I still live in survivalist mode. I do love the journey quiet of berry picking. Earlier this week, I drove out to Sauvie Island Farms spent the money to pick on well maintained berry vines. Getting out of Portland and into the countryside always makes me happy, and reminds me of my summers as a teenager being outside picking berries for money or working at the dried flower nursery. It always makes me wish I was a farmer, but then I remember my friend who works her ass off running a small organic farm. She told me that once she calculated her hourly wage (if she would have paid herself) to be something like $5.50 an hour. So, thanks farmers! I appreciate coming to your land and picking your berries and cucumbers and basil. [For great pictures of produce, check out my farmer friend's blog belweather farm days.]

*Unfortunately, in my family the idea of pie baking was more exciting that the pie eating (very unlike the Ingalls, who always seemed to be starving out there on the prairie). Often after everyone had a piece, the pie would sit in the fridge and get dried out and sometimes moldy. Sorry Mom. 

A County Fair Never Grows Old

Beginning when I was 7 or 8, my mom made sure each of us kids entered stuff in the Polk County Fair - crafts we had done in school or scouts, cookies, flower arrangements. It was something to do during the summer, and an opportunity to create and participate (my mom liked to keep us three kids occupied the best she could - we joined the summer reading program at the library in our small town, took swimming lessons and gymnastics, visited the teddy bear lady, which is a whole other story.) I loved it. I loved creating a flower arrangement with a theme. I loved standing in line and offering up my synthetic woven potholder or my God's eye of yarn and popsicle sticks or my 5th grade essay on the Beluga whale to the ladies who made sure my entry tag was filled out with my name and address and then properly folded over so judging could be anonymous. I loved heading to the Arts and Crafts building the first morning of the fair, the scent of hay from the surrounding fields in the air, to see if I had won any blue ribbons, red ribbons, or black, third place ribbons.