Berries

I love berries of all kinds.  I like to just eat them straight off the vine or from a bowl with milk and sugar.  Berries always remind me of spring and summer time in Kentucky.  I guess the first berries I remember are raspberries.  My grandparents had a raspberry patch between the path leading past the barn and chicken house and the little creek.  I was rarely allowed in it due to the presence of snakes so my grandmother would pick the berries and put them in the refrigerator. 

Berries with milk and sugar were and are one of the best things in the world.  Then there were huckleberries.  Huckleberries are like very small blue berries and have a similar flavor.  They grew on the very tops of the hills and, unfortunately, most of the hill tops are gone now taking the huckleberries with them.  My brother and I went to see the "Mary Jane Cave" some years ago and found a small patch of huckleberry vines on the top of the ridge there.  They were the first I had seen in decades.

It used to be a way for local kids to make some spending money.  They would go pick buckets full of huckleberries and sell them to adults to eat or make jams and jellies out of.  I believe they would have made good pies and cobblers but I don't remember ever having had one.

Then there were mulberries.  A mulberry grows on a tree and not a vine.  They are long like a small finger and are a deep black or purple color when ripe.  I loved to eat mulberries though most people did not pay them much mind except the squirrels loved to eat them as well so finding a good mulberry tree could lead to a good mess of squirrels for supper.  There used to be a small mulberry tree out past the garden from where my sister and brother-in-law lived in the old Collins' house.  I think it must have gotten cut down when they moved their trailer in that area as I don't recall it after that. 

Next were blackberries and dewberries.  They looked the same but the blackberries grew on talk briers and the dewberries grew on a vine close to the ground and were a lot sweeter.  They were also very rare.  In fact the only dewberry vine I knew of grew on the edge of the path from the road to my grandparent's house.  I watched that vine like a hawk every  year to make sure I got all the berries it produced which might be a half dozen.

Blackberries were more plentiful but not overwhelming until after the strip mines cleared off vast patches of land.  Birds would eat the blackberries and drop the seeds all over and soon there were vast tracks of blackberries growing on every old strip mine.  Nothing better than a good blackberry cobbler hot from the oven with ice cold sweet milk poured over it.

Then there was strawberries.  Wild ones as well as farmed ones.  There was a strawberry farm over in Martin County where we went a few times to pick strawberries.  And, there was a small patch of wild strawberries on the hill just past the graveyard where Skip Boyd build his house in later years.  Wild strawberries and the ones you get from the supermarket are not even close to being alike.  The wild ones are quite small and bursting with flavor.  Those tiny berries packed more berry taste than a hand full of store bought big strawberries ever could.

The last of the local berries I remember are goose berries.  Walter Osborne had some goose berry plants down across the road from his house.  Mother would get permission from him for us to pick them and we'd spend hours there picking berries.  I remember the bushes were well over my head.  The berries were large and green in color and tasted really nice.  That was over forty years ago.  I wonder if those bushes are still there. 

There is one more that I don't really know if it is a berry or a fruit.  I suspect it is a fruit as the seeds are on the inside.  We called them 'ground cherries'.  They grew in the fall in the gardens after all the crops were gone.  They were about the size of marbles and were inside a papery cover similar to that of a tomatillo.  They were yellow in color and had a good flavor.  Bunches of them grew where my mother had melons planted. 

I once bought some tomatillos thinking they would be like those ground cherries and was quite disappointed to find they are more like green tomatoes.  I guess it was the paper-like covering they are in that fooled me.

Berries of all kinds were a big part of my childhood and teen years.  Today I still love them though I don't eat them like I once would have.  My body has changed as well as my tastes and even ability to taste.  I guess even the taste buds get old and worn out as one gets older so food is kind of bland and nothing is like it was in memory.

Oh, I almost forgot Elderberries.  They grew on a small tree in large clusters of tiny berries colored like blueberries or even more towards black than blue.  There was a big elderberry tree (or bush) that grew about half way between my grandparents and our houses and I'd keep an eye on it every spring and raid it daily as long as there were berries to be had.  Had to be quick to beat the birds to them.

Then there were polk berries.  These were not edible and grew on the mature polk plants.  Young polk was used as an eating green during the spring.  Later in the year as the plants matured they would have long pods of blue berries on them.  They were not good to eat but they were fun to throw at things as they left a very bright stain on anything they came in contact with.   It was kind of like a precursor to paint ball when we would have wars with polk berries.

I still enjoy berries though I don't eat them as eagerly as I once did.  They just have so many antitoxicants and other good stuff one needs in one's diet and the flavors are still great.  About all that is left is to buy them from the store and they only have blackberries, raspberries and strawberries and they are all very expensive.  One certainly has to limit one's berry indulgences lest one break the bank.

Late Spring and early Summer was berry time in Eastern Kentucky and was one of my favorite times of the year.