berry picking

One of my big summer discoveries in the Hudson Valley has been berry picking (thanks to Gabes' inspiration for strawberry picking earlier this summer). I have been cooking up jams and freezing berries for later. But I have to disagree with Thoreau on waiting until he is done (what a moralist!): nothing is as good as a sun-warmed berry in the field, juice running down my fingers amidst the sweat and grit of the good, clean dirt.

"When I used to pick the berries for dinner on the East Quarter hills I did not eat one until I had done, for going a-berrying implies more things than eating the berries. They at home got only the pudding; I got the forenoon out of doors and the appetite for the pudding."

-From Thoreau's Journal; August 22, 1860

via {the Thoreau Society}