Dream Come True...

Growing up I had the annual opportunity of trekking out into the back 58 (acres) of my parents' homestead and picking buckets full of fresh, delicious, blackberries and black raspberries throughout the Summer.

I loved dressing up in long sleeves and jeans in 80 degree weather, strapping a belt on my waist to string an old ice cream bucket to and coming out of the woods covered in scratches, with purple fingers, and smacking my lips from all the berries that "accidently fell in my mouth" while I was picking.

It was always my hope to have my very own picking patch someday.  At our last house in the City, I talked about planting some raspberry bushes along our back fence.  However, in nearly 6 years I simply never got around to it.  

Now that I've lived in our new house (which sits on 5 acres) for a whole year now, I'm learning some of the perks of having land out in the middle of farm country.  For the first time I have my very own berry patch in my back yard.  

I was so excited to be able to go out back tonight (with my little helper) to pick blackberries.  Many of them were dried up and/or too small so I took a lesson from my Mom and picked and scattered them to increase our crop in the years to come.  

 Of course between the "helpful" eating and the "oops!" spills from a clumsy 2-year-old, we had less than a dozen berries left by the time we made it back into the house, but it was so worth it.  Next year we'll have an even larger crop and I'll continue to grow it until I, too, have a bumper crop and can pick buckets full just like the good old days on the Homestead.