onde onde: Where There's a Will, There's a Way

I Love Blackberries!

I mean, I really luh -uh-uh-uhvvvvv blackberries!

Just ask my mama. She'll tell ya. In fact, she tells everybody.

When I was growing up, I remember on our farm that we had blackberries everywhere. They were behind the barn, in the fields around the house, and across the road behind the Christmas tree field.

Lots and lots of them.

YUMMY!

I also remember that we pitched a fit every time my mom made us go with her to pick them.

Ohhh, little do we know when we're young. :)

She'd make us suit up in long sleeves, and gloves, and pants tucked into boots or shoes.

You'd have thought we were the local extermination crew.

It was smothering hot and terribly uncomfortable.

But necessary so we didn't get pricked to death by the thorns or eaten alive by ticks.

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(However, to hear her tell it, we never helped her.

This is what she told my husband over the 4th.

I tell her that her memory has escaped her, since I clearly remember doing it.

She also says we never helped to weed the gardens - and I KNOW I distinctly remember doing that!)

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My mom was a canning fanatic, and a great cook, which means we had blackberry jam, blackberry cobbler, blackberry lemonade, and frozen blackberries year round.

Fast forward many years.................

Eventually we stopped using the propery as a functioning farm, and also let the gardens go.

For some reason, after that, the blackberries didn't come as easily anymore.

There was a small patch of them that remained at the edge of the barn for a few years, but they're gone now too.

But my dear mommy would always remember to pick some while they were there and freeze them for me so I'd have some when I came to visit.

For those of you who have never eaten wild grown blackberries, you really don't know what you're missing. I encourage you to find a blackberry farm in your area and go pick some for yourself.

Store bought, preservative laden blackberries don't hold a candle to them.

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The last few times I've been home (before moving back), there were no more blackberries to be found. :(

But....(angel choir)..... enter a broken bushhog.....

You're probably asking yourself, 1, What is a bushhog, and 2, how does a broken bushhog give you blackberries?

Answer: 1. A bushhog, for those of you that do not farm, is a large mowing attachment that you hook to the back of a tractor to mow fields.

And 2. When you can't mow the fields, things tend to grow up. :):)

So while we were sitting out by the pool at mom's on the 4th, she was talking to my hubby about not being able to mow the fields, pointing here and there, etc.

And then she said, pointing way over there, "There's blackberries all over that field but you can't get to them."

Uh, hello, did you forget who I am? The family blackberryaholic?

So naturally I started devising my plan to get to them.

My hubby said I'd never get to them, and my mom said "You wanna bet? She'll find a way!"

Off I went, to see what I was up against.

(Mind you, this is a large field. I tried to point my camera to get a close shot.)

Roxanne, one of the dogs, went trapsing through the field ahead of me, so she knocked down somewhat of a path for me. Love that dog. (Tell her she's pretty and she's your best friend.)