Punishment at the Patch

Fresh picked blueberries and blackberries...
Have you ever seen such blackberries? They were almost the size of your thumb!
Another glance...The picture just doesn't do them justice!

Deep down inside, I'm a country girl. I LOVE fresh, summer vegetables. I love to cook from scratch. I love to use old recipes from my mom and grandmothers. And I look forward to one day sharing it all with my kids.

Fresh, summer vegetables...I love to eat them and I love to can/freeze them to save them for winter days.

I remember...shucking corn as a child, cutting corn off the cob, blanching the corn, stirring the corn in pans placed in front of fans, and then scooping 2 cups of corn into quart-sized bags.

I remember...making pickles...but, before we made them we searched for small gardens in town in hopes of some little lady who might let us have some of her fresh dill.

I remember...blanching poke sallet, poke sallet, poke sallet. (In case you are not familiar with this food, it's a type of greens. Similar to turnip greens, but it grows wild. You have to boil it twice, then fry it with bacon and onion. One summer, we went and picked blueberries and they had poke sallet growing everywhere. We asked if we could pick some, and they said pick all you want. We had so much of it, that we washed it in the washing machine before we froze it.

I remember...canning tomatoes and being on the search for finding tomatoes for .50 a pound.

Canning is not really all that fun, but the end result is soo worth it.

I had planned to pick one more gallon of blueberries at Renee's Berry Garden this morning. However, they were picked out on Wednesday and declared their picking season CLOSED. So, I drove to Cox's Berry Farm in Clarksville. I have to say, Renee's garden is much cleaner and neater. Cox's farm was more like field...not toddler friendly. Dad kept Madison this morning and I picked my little heart out. Boy was it HOT! And, I mean HOT! I thought I was about to go into labor in those field. My back was killing me! Just as I was about to check out, I saw the lady's berries in front of my. Huge, enormous blackberries. I've never seen anything like it before. So, of course, I just had to go pick me some. The bushes were thorn less, but much messier than the blueberries. You had to step through a lot of brush. The lady in front of me shared the secret of picking blackberries with me. All of the huge black ones are on the bottom. You can't really see them unless you move the branches around. She was so right! I was sweating like crazy, pretty much soaking wet with sweat and my back was absolutely killing me. I had to keep standing up and leaning back to relieve my back, but I was having fun picking out the "best" blackberries.

Now it's time to get started on my blueberry and blackberry cobblers.