Marionberry love

We got up early one morning last week and made our way to a little farm to find marionberries. We had to walk a bit to find the berry patch but then we saw the thin vines wrapped in circles, red and black berries dropping from all sides. Really, quite beautiful.


My Grandma came with us and they all got right to work picking berries off the vines.


She gave the boys tips on picking the ripest fruit and how to carefully pull them off the vines. She grew up picking fruit and berries all summer long as a girl on her family's fruit tree farm in Idaho. She knows her varieties and when the best time to pick them is. She knows how bruised fruit can change a canning batch. And she has story after story of the women in her family getting together to can all summer long.


I realize how much of this information is lost when it's not passed down. Invaluable skills and experience about home-keeping, canning, and gardening. All that has nearly been lost because of convenience and fast food. At least around here, there seems to be some grass-root efforts to get this information back and to teach it, person to person, community to community. So it was really, really nice to learn hands-on from my Grandma and to see her teaching my boys.





After a little mishap where my clumsiness got the best of me (dropped the whole box on the ground!), we split our pickings and said goodbye. Hot marionberry crisp with cold vanilla rice ice cream for dinner... er... dessert.


And then I canned two little jars of marionberry jam with a little left over to eat from the pan. Delicious... and definitely worth a day's work.


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Thank you for all the anniversary wishes! We had a wonderful time. And the only thing I will say about us not looking like we've changed much... well... the photographer used a lot of air brushing in that last photo. :-)

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