We have a raspberry patch adjacent to our garden that’s doing unusually well this year. It’s an everbearing red berry patch, so we had berries in the summer and just now again in September.
Our recent Indian summer favorably boosted the production of my berries, plus the fact that we didn’t get an early overnight frost. We had no idea what we were getting when I had ordered a dozen plants about six years ago. Between my husband and me, we had very little experience with domestic raspberry plants.
When my husband was a little kid, he had to go wild raspberry picking with his mom and siblings and aunt and cousins. The moms gave each kid a pail tied around their waist and a piece of gum. They needed to fill their pail to the brim three times before they could eat any berries. In the meantime, the gum kept their mouths busy.
The other day I was talking to my mother-in-law about wild berry picking, and she recalled the day her and her sister-in-law got chased by a bull! The bull had noticed my husband’s aunt had a red straw hat on and took off after the two ladies, he on one side of the fence line, the frightened berry pickers along the other. “Take off your hat!” my mother-in-law hollered. “He sees red!” They took off running for the safety of the car, which held all the kids who were laughing so hard they were falling over themselves. Those little kids didn’t understand the danger of the situation. Hearts beating fast, the moms got back to the car and (40 years later), my mother-in-law lived to tell about it.
After they got done picking, my husband’s mom would make raspberry jam and can raspberry sauce. They’d have berries and bread for supper the days they picked. Because the berries were always ripe in July and they were busy baling hay, a berry and bread supper was all there was time for.
I have no idea why our raspberry patch is doing so well. One year while our middle son was mowing the lawn by the garden, he thought the berry shoots were grass and mowed them down to the quick. Maybe that jump-started them!
If our oldest son doesn’t know something, he checks out a YouTube video to educate himself. He suggested I try it if I ever needed to know how-to. I just Googled, “Raspberry Care Instructions” and discovered how and when to prune my berry patch by watching one of those videos, which described perfectly what I should do. How on earth did we ever learn anything before we had the Internet?
The last part of the berry season produced thumb-sized, fat, juicy fruit. Picking in the morning, the berries were washed by the dew; glowing and inviting. Hornets, ants, bumblebees and a few ladybugs would vie for the fruit. I would literally be surrounded by buzzing but miraculously did not get stung. I think we had a deal, the insects and me: You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone. There was enough for everybody. However, any fruit that was gorged by a bug was tossed. Getting back to the house I painstakingly went through my harvest, making sure we weren’t going to ingest any, um…, protein.
I took full advantage of the patch’s production this year. Our raspberries had made a perfect addition to our on-the-tractor lunches during harvest season. I’d pack a sandwich, cookies and a 24-ounce recycled cottage cheese container filled with fresh-picked raspberries and away we’d go.
Different times I was able to fill a gallon ice cream container full. There were too many to pack for our lunches, so my sister suggested freezing them individually on a cookie sheet to make jam later when I had more time. I did not want any of this delicious fruit to go to waste! I also have made raspberry muffins, used berries as a topping for an evening ice cream treat, stole a couple right off the branch as I mowed lawn close by, as well as baked numerous pans of Vudka, a recipe I got from my mother-in-law. I think I’ll share it with you. It’s simple and simply delicious!
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a 9x13” pan. (I put the glass pan right into the microwave, melting the butter and after, rotating the pan so the butter evenly coats the bottom.) In a medium-sized bowl, beat two eggs slightly. Add two cups of milk and two cups of flour. Mix well. The mixture will be the consistency of pancake batter. Pour into prepared 9x13” pan. Sprinkle two to three cups of raspberries over the batter. Top entire pan evenly with one cup of sugar. Bake for 45 minutes in preheated 350 degree oven. Serve warm.
It is so very good, easy to make and shamelessly, my husband and I have been known to consume an entire pan in two days. Yes, we have. Smack dab in the middle of last year’s horrific winter, my husband got a hankering for Vudka. I brought home some store-bought raspberries and made a pan. It was icky. The raspberries tasted like wax, it was just awful. So the moral of that story is, make Vudka with fresh-picked, home-grown raspberries!
Homemade jam, ice cream topping, muffins, fresh fruit-on-the-go, baked in a Vudka, or educated in how to tend my patch with a little help from the Internet, delicious everbearing raspberries can’t be beat! And thankfully, I have no bulls chasing me while I pick.
(“And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.’” Genesis 1:29)
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