Mother Nature’s Mid-Summer Sweets

Grandma with Mother Nature’s wild summer bounty. LaDonna Stephens and a great crop of Independence Day blackberries.

For me there is not a more nostalgic and beautiful summertime scene than blooming blackberry bushes along an old, rusty fence row with an old, retired dairy barn in the background. The unripe, bright red berries intermingled with plump, ripe blackberries ready for picking, brings back memories of summertime in the early seventies picking the brier-laden black fruit alongside my aunts and uncles on the family farm. There were Grandpa, Grandma, and 9 of 11 uncles and aunts still at home. We had no cable TV, video games, or internet, …heck, we didn’t even have air conditioning. Remembering back today it reminds me of the popular 70’s TV show, The Waltons. Life seemed more innocent back then and our daily fun was made through our own imagination (if you can imagine that!). Picking blackberries was a tasty adventure 35 years ago, and if you like the slower paced outdoor family life, it’s still a tasty Independence Day adventure today.

Thirty-five years ago there were cattle and horses keeping the barnyard, pastures and fence rows clear. Still, the blackberry briers were easy to find, but just not as plentiful as today. Back then the fence rows where the creek and fields bordered each other and the field ditches that had been filled with cord wood debris to prevent erosion were the best places to find blackberry briers. Today, in the absence of livestock, the deer, turkeys, and furbearers have their run of the place and the whole farm is a blackberry heaven. In the Ozarks any field that has been without livestock or a good brush hogging in the last two years is a prime location to begin a blackberry treasure hunt.

Thirty-five years ago a pair of cut-offs, a tee-shirt, a pair of canvas Converse tennis shoes and an empty cottage cheese container was all you needed and out the farmhouse door you went. As a child, much to my parent’s chagrin, I didn’t give much thought to chiggers, ticks, and other creepy-crawlies until after-the-fact. Today, as a parent, I am much more concerned (ok,…ok, my wife is much more concerned) about the kids getting infested with ticks and chiggers. I must admit I don’t miss digging at ankles full of chiggers for weeks after picking blackberries. These days at our house its required practice to wear long pants, long socks, high-top shoes, and a good insect repellent. And when that doesn’t work my wife blames me for dragging in the critters that mysteriously jump from me to her while we sleep even thought I don’t get a single bite - something to do with sweet and sour she says.

An improvement on the empty cottage cheese container. A gallon milk jug with the front cut away and handle intact makes for the perfect blackberry holder when attached to the belt.

This year the 4^th of July was a day made for picking blackberries. The Ozarks received plenty of rain earlier in the summer so the berries were big and beautiful and the temperature was a relatively cool 82°F with overcast skies. Mother Nature was practically begging us to come out – and we obliged her. After almost getting stuck crossing the creek in the Jeep and much trash-talking about who picked more berries between the boys and the girls, we managed approximately 4 gallons of ripe and sweet berries with reports of only a few stray ticks. It was another successful hunting trip, of a different sort, in the Ozark hills.

Thirty-five years ago sounds like a long time but it was a blink of an eye. In my mind, each time I walk into the old farmhouse I can still see grandma, long wooden spoon in hand, looking down into the big simmering kettle of purple froth and stirring it as she boiled down the berries for jelly and jam. Of course the best part of picking blackberries has always been eating all the summer sweets that come along with them and nothing says Ozark hills in the morning more than coffee and toast with grandma’s freshly made blackberry jelly or, in the evening, vanilla ice cream and grandma’s freshly made blackberry cobbler. And now that my wife is a grandma she’s doing a wonderful job of continuing the legacy. We had homemade waffles with walnuts and blackberries for breakfast Monday morning and they were wonderful. Grandmas are the best! So says the One-Eyed Hillbilly.

Greg Stephens is a 35-year veteran & life-time student of the great outdoors. His column appears weekly in print & online publications. You can email him at gregstephens@one-eyedhillbilly.com. For more columns go to www.one-eyedhillbilly.blogspot.com.