Black raspberries

Hilda and I have been picking “free range” (a.k.a., wild) black raspberries every other day. With all the rain we’ve had this summer, the mosquitoes are wicked bad. The second time we went out, I remembered that we had mosquito net hats. Wearing them has been a vast improvement. I feel so smug when I hear the mosquitoes buzzing all around my face and they can’t get me.  Here’s a selfie of us in our mosquito nets.

Selfie in our mosquito net hats, me on the left, Hilda on the right

 

The trouble with the nets is that it impairs color vision a bit. We have to pick primarily by feel, tugging ever so gently at the berries and only really picking the ones that let go easily. Except when you are reaching way back with arm fully extended and all your weight on one leg, like you are playing Twister over a bed of briars, to reach that one ripe-looking berry right there, and you can’t stand the thought of coming back empty-handed, well, then you pull a little harder. Yes, there are always quite a few berries in the bucket that are a little more red than black. Oh well. That’s why we put sugar in jam.



Black raspberry harvest

Hilda and I have picked berries together since I was a wee child. It is one of many unexpected gifts that I can have memories of picking berries with my mother at the end of her life as well as at the beginning of mine. I am so fortunate to have the opportunity to live with my parents again and to have them so self-sufficient into their 80’s. Some of my friends couldn’t stand to live with their parents. Some have endured much more hardship in caring for elderly parents. One young friend is spending her summer giving hospice care to her mother, who is not even ten years older than I am and is no longer responding to chemotherapy. I am so lucky.

It’s farm to table every night at my house. Last Friday, I roasted zucchini, garlic, and lovely young carrots for supper. Delicious! I served it with chicken. I put one of the butchered hens in the slow cooker all day. It was much easier to get off the bone this time. Plenty of schmaltz again, you bet. I’d guess at least 8 ounces of the 3.5-pound weight was schmaltz. Two mysteries have been solved since I started raising chickens. The first one has to do with information learned a long, long time ago, probably in junior high. The Old Masters put egg yolk in their paint. For 40 years I wondered about that. The first time I had a truly fresh egg over easy, it all became clear. Fresh yolks are STICKY. Second mystery: I read a lot of recipes and stories about cooking. Some recipes from the Jewish tradition specify frying in schmaltz. How many chickens would you need to get enough schmaltz to deep fry something, I wondered. Now I know. If you use old hens, two.

The harvest for Friday nights' supper

We’ve got cucumbers to the eyeballs these days. The next question I will be researching is how many days in a row can Terry eat cucumbers in sour cream before he gets sick of it?

Cucumber harvest from three days ago. I picked twice as many this afternoon.

 I mentioned in my last post that the new hens love the kennel. When I went out yesterday, everyone was having a peaceful Sunday afternoon together except for Gracie who preferred to be outside (on the right).

Eleven chickens resting in the kennel, Gracie outside on the right.

 

A few minutes later, Nadia had to get up to stretch. That precipitated general unrest and shifting around until they all settled into new positions. Except for Gracie, who was unperturbed.