blackberries

[Stoneheartfarm]

Chuck,

Wild strawberries take a long time to pick in quantity. I remember once (only once), when I was a kid we got enough for a desert at one meal. Over the years, they have gotten fewer and fewer until now I can't say I've found one in maybe 10 years. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]

My folks assure me that when they were kids there where huge fields of all varieties of berries just for the taking. (Of course, they had to walk to school. And it was five miles. Uphill both ways. And when they got there, they had to build a fire. With coal that they carried on their back. Up hill. Five miles. Both ways.) I kind of take the berry story with a grain of salt, figuring that the sands of time can make a beach so wide it's difficult to remember the sea. However, it's possible since there have been some minor climactic changes, and there is always Canada, which still seems to have crops of these wild berries. If the growing area has shifted North a bit, the old stories could be true.

Another wild fruit I like is what we always called June Berry (also known as service berry, sarvis berry, Saskatoon blueberry annd sugar plum). These also seem pretty few and far between, however, I did discover a nursery about an hour from here that is selling them as ornamentals.

Steve

[Stoneheartfarm]

Bird,

I'm glad to see you made it over here. We can use you.

Steve

[Chuck52]

Steve,

You got me remembering what I used to pick as a kid back in east Tennessee. Blackberries were so common most all kids picked them during the summer, but the only wild strawberries I ever remember finding were along the upper Tellico river. There was a very small patch we happened on. I can remember once going up into the mountains to pick gooseberries, and we regularly went looking for muscadines, though usually without much luck. I was squirrel hunting one day and just sitting against a tree waiting for some action when I realized I was right in the middle of a nice mess of muscadines....I forgot the squirrels that day. But one memory of wild fruit has bugged me for years. When I was about ten, I found a golf-ball sized fruit on a skinny vine along my Granny's fence. I took it to her because she knew everything (as all Grannies do), and she told me it was a ground apricot. She cut it open for me and I remember it as being liquid filled, with a thin pulp, and tasting something like apricot. That was the only one of those I ever found, and it wasn't until I was living in Puerto Rico that I had something similar...passion fruit. I have never found a reference to "ground apricot", but my Granny was half Cherokee and probably did know many things that never made it into books.

Chuck

[Bird]

Thank you, Steve. I just haven't had time to spend on this forum until recently. And I said the only place I'd found any wild strawberries was in Canada, and just remembered that I found just a few when I was doing a gas leakage survey across country in northern Pennsylvania ten years ago; probably only ate a dozen or less.

And speaking of walking that 5 miles to school; when I started school we lived on U.S. 70 west of Ardmore - right where I-35 is now. And I could have sworn we had to walk a mile west along U.S. 70 to the next crossroad where we caught the schoolbus. But the last time I was there looking around, that stretch of road has really shrunk; couldn't be more than a quarter mile now. [img]/forums/images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Bird, Yet additional evidence in favor of plate tektonics. It proably was a mile that far back in time. [img]/forums/images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Five miles uphill through the snow, both ways past hostile wildlife, barefoot, carrying coal or cordwood to heat the schoolhouse for all 8 grades in one room with no glass in the window, newspapers for wallpaper to try to reduce the draft and cracks beteween the floor boards so wide you could watch the chickens scratching under the building. Did I miss anything?

Pat

[Stoneheartfarm]

<font color="blue">But the last time I was there looking around, that stretch of road has really shrunk </font color>

Bird,

The answer is quite simple. That is the area the sand of time was taken from in order to make the beach. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

Steve

[egon]

The horse barn out back and the hand pump well. And of course the two separate little buildings with seats in them.

Egon

[jimmoore]

and lunch carried in a 4 pound lard pail with a handle. Fried potatoes in a split open biscuit!! [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]