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For twenty years I've grown a crop I never eat. Every fall I harvest gallons of delicious fruit from my sixteen foot by four foot bed of 'Heritage' raspberries. Delicious to everyone but me, that is. I've never liked the sweet, floral taste of raspberries.
And yet I get great pleasure from the whole experience of growing raspberries, from cutting back the canes in spring, through top-dressing the bed with aged mature, then finally picking the abundant fruit.
Picking raspberries is a garden ritual that begins in late August and often lasts through mid-October. The ritual starts in the morning, as part of my daily evaluation of the garden. Each morning before work I spend a few minutes in the garden, watering seedlings, checking the undersides of leaves for pest eggs, and deciding what needs to be picked that night.
At dusk I select containers from the kitchen based on my morning estimates and head out to the garden. I pick the vegetables first, then finish in the berry patch. I lift each arching cane to examine the cluster of heavy berries at it's end. I gently tug at the darkest berries, more purple than red at full ripeness. If they release easily, they are ready. I lose track of time and pick until the darkness makes it hard to tell purple from red, or my container is full.
Some berries go to my in-laws and my mother, others to friends. But most of the harvest is for my husband of thirty two years, who has been ill for the last five. His illness is chronic, and there is little I can do to ease his pain and sadness. But he has always loved raspberries, and now they are one of the enduring pleasures of his changed life. Each day during the harvest he eats my raspberries. When I ask him if he is sick of them after a month or so, he says 'never', and so I keep picking and he keeps eating.
This fall the berries just came and came. The weather was right-- dry, not too hot, not too cold. My berry patch was like the fairy tale bag that was always full of food no matter how much was taken from it. Finally, in mid October, a frost blackened the final berries. I came in that night and told my husband. 'Those were great raspberries' he said, smiling gently at the memory.
This winter I ordered some blackberry plants to arrive in April. I don't like blackberries either, but he does. I've already got a nice pile of manure stockpiled under a tarp to for the planting holes.
