juantoo3
Well-Known Member
Picking blueberries
The local blueberry farm generously throws open its gates to the public for a couple of days each year, and lets whoever would like to come in and pick all the berries they can to take home, for free. I’ve never met the owners, but would certainly like to thank them for their generosity. I start looking forward to early May, it has become something of an annual pilgrimage now for the wife and I the past few years. This past weekend was blueberry picking time, and once again the wife and I are stocked up on a local delicacy we otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford…real, honest to goodness blueberries!
Picking blueberries isn’t particularly challenging, at least I don’t think so. Picking is one of those activities where I can set my body on autopilot and allow my mind to wander…and I did. I suppose I should elaborate on my method a little, in that I tend to glean a bush pretty good. First year out I picked everything that had the least hint of blue on any bush I was picking. Of course, once you get them home you have to clean them…that means culling out the berries that aren’t all that great for any eating purposes…so I’ve honed my method just a bit in an effort to minimize the cleaning afterwards. I’m a bit more picky now about which berries I grab…but I do give a bush a pretty thorough going over.
Early Saturday morning, berries were quite plentiful, more than I’ve ever seen. I was able to find whole clusters of berries, sometimes almost a dozen to a stalk, some of the berries were a good three quarters of an inch across, sizable for blueberries. It didn’t take long though before other people showed up and the rows started getting picked over, so after a few hours it got a bit more difficult, but not by any means impossible.
And I began to notice, even in rows where I had seen perhaps 3 or 4 people go through, I could still find berries. Not leftover has beens, nice primo berries. And I started wondering why so many people were leaving such choice berries behind? Not that I was particularly worried, more for me, but if people came out of their way to pick berries…why weren’t they picking berries?
There was the nice young couple that seemed to me more interested in flirting with each other than picking berries. There was the mother with three kids in tow, doing the best she could while the 7 year old was whining how he was “ti-yerd” at 9 o’clock in the morning. There was the old man that seemed more like he was on a morning stroll than anything else, I wondered if he expected the berries to jump into his basket? There was the fellow I never did actually lay eyes on, but we exchanged a few words as he made his way past me…and I still found plenty of berries he left behind.
The thought crossed my mind of the Buddhist teaching of how a vehicle is the way to the destination, and that once you get to where you are going you don’t carry the vehicle any further…an analogy about the purpose of religion. I know it might seem dumb, but I found myself thinking about how all of the world’s religions are kinda like a blueberry bush.
First off, though one might be tempted…not every berry on the bush is worth eating. True, some are plump and tasty. Others are still blushed with red, tart but still edible…I like these best, but the wife scolds me how they aren’t ripe yet…not sure what the lesson is there. Some are quite small, obviously ripe but just don’t taste good. Some have a “smoky” aftertaste I don’t even want to guess about. Some are clearly bug eaten, or over-ripe, or too green.
The bushes themselves do present a few challenges...there are spiders and bees, and I found a wasp actually eating from the split on the side of an over-ripe berry. And snakes are a concern, but since I’ve never actually seen one in the berry patch I’m thinking that is more of a latent Jungian dose of symbolic paranoia…but not an unreasonable one considering where I live does have rattlers, cottonmouths and coral snakes, all of which are poisonous.
The farm has their bushes laid out in rows, with two rows of bushes side by side, space for a small tractor, and another double row of bushes, and so on. My method of picking is “determined,” meaning I don’t have any reservations about getting dirty. I climb in between the bushes. I’ve got light scratches all over my arms and a couple on my face from leaning into the bushes to get at the hard to get berries. I don’t think I saw anyone else who did anything like what I did as far as picking. While I am no expert, I do have extended family who worked various fields as produce pickers, and I learned how as a kid…not that I spent any great time in the fields, but picking is picking. I was in the blueberry patch to pick, so I was picking.
So I don’t know if folks just didn’t know how to pick? Couldn’t be bothered getting their nice clothes dirty? Too distracted with other things going on around them at the time? I can only guess at the reasons, and there were probably almost as many reasons as there were people…they wanted to pick on their terms. So all the easy fruit was taken, but so much of the good stuff was left behind. If it was too hard to get at…meaning the picker didn’t want to put forth the effort…the fruit didn’t get picked.
If there had been money involved, maybe some of that may have changed…folks might have been a little more focused, tried a little harder, had some skin in the game…I don’t know. Religion is free too, pretty much there just for the asking...people tend to pick the low hanging fruit and walk on in that regard, too. Or people pick the berries that appeal to them, the ones on the easy side of the bush. Or maybe if they are tall, the only see the berries on the top. Maybe if they are short, they only see the berries in the middle. Few people brush aside the leaves to see if they missed any. I can’t help but think some people only saw berries that grabbed their attention because the sunlight happened to hit them just right. Some people cruised through only looking for “perfect” berries…whatever that means to them.
I’m no expert, and I’m seriously not casting any judgment, but the thought did occur to me that maybe they didn’t have the drive, the want, the will, the urge to *really* pick berries, to do a good and thorough job. Not patting myself on the back, but if the Divine were like a blueberry bush, and all we had to do was pick the berries…what kind of picker would you be?
The local blueberry farm generously throws open its gates to the public for a couple of days each year, and lets whoever would like to come in and pick all the berries they can to take home, for free. I’ve never met the owners, but would certainly like to thank them for their generosity. I start looking forward to early May, it has become something of an annual pilgrimage now for the wife and I the past few years. This past weekend was blueberry picking time, and once again the wife and I are stocked up on a local delicacy we otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford…real, honest to goodness blueberries!
Picking blueberries isn’t particularly challenging, at least I don’t think so. Picking is one of those activities where I can set my body on autopilot and allow my mind to wander…and I did. I suppose I should elaborate on my method a little, in that I tend to glean a bush pretty good. First year out I picked everything that had the least hint of blue on any bush I was picking. Of course, once you get them home you have to clean them…that means culling out the berries that aren’t all that great for any eating purposes…so I’ve honed my method just a bit in an effort to minimize the cleaning afterwards. I’m a bit more picky now about which berries I grab…but I do give a bush a pretty thorough going over.
Early Saturday morning, berries were quite plentiful, more than I’ve ever seen. I was able to find whole clusters of berries, sometimes almost a dozen to a stalk, some of the berries were a good three quarters of an inch across, sizable for blueberries. It didn’t take long though before other people showed up and the rows started getting picked over, so after a few hours it got a bit more difficult, but not by any means impossible.
And I began to notice, even in rows where I had seen perhaps 3 or 4 people go through, I could still find berries. Not leftover has beens, nice primo berries. And I started wondering why so many people were leaving such choice berries behind? Not that I was particularly worried, more for me, but if people came out of their way to pick berries…why weren’t they picking berries?
There was the nice young couple that seemed to me more interested in flirting with each other than picking berries. There was the mother with three kids in tow, doing the best she could while the 7 year old was whining how he was “ti-yerd” at 9 o’clock in the morning. There was the old man that seemed more like he was on a morning stroll than anything else, I wondered if he expected the berries to jump into his basket? There was the fellow I never did actually lay eyes on, but we exchanged a few words as he made his way past me…and I still found plenty of berries he left behind.
The thought crossed my mind of the Buddhist teaching of how a vehicle is the way to the destination, and that once you get to where you are going you don’t carry the vehicle any further…an analogy about the purpose of religion. I know it might seem dumb, but I found myself thinking about how all of the world’s religions are kinda like a blueberry bush.
First off, though one might be tempted…not every berry on the bush is worth eating. True, some are plump and tasty. Others are still blushed with red, tart but still edible…I like these best, but the wife scolds me how they aren’t ripe yet…not sure what the lesson is there. Some are quite small, obviously ripe but just don’t taste good. Some have a “smoky” aftertaste I don’t even want to guess about. Some are clearly bug eaten, or over-ripe, or too green.
The bushes themselves do present a few challenges...there are spiders and bees, and I found a wasp actually eating from the split on the side of an over-ripe berry. And snakes are a concern, but since I’ve never actually seen one in the berry patch I’m thinking that is more of a latent Jungian dose of symbolic paranoia…but not an unreasonable one considering where I live does have rattlers, cottonmouths and coral snakes, all of which are poisonous.
The farm has their bushes laid out in rows, with two rows of bushes side by side, space for a small tractor, and another double row of bushes, and so on. My method of picking is “determined,” meaning I don’t have any reservations about getting dirty. I climb in between the bushes. I’ve got light scratches all over my arms and a couple on my face from leaning into the bushes to get at the hard to get berries. I don’t think I saw anyone else who did anything like what I did as far as picking. While I am no expert, I do have extended family who worked various fields as produce pickers, and I learned how as a kid…not that I spent any great time in the fields, but picking is picking. I was in the blueberry patch to pick, so I was picking.
So I don’t know if folks just didn’t know how to pick? Couldn’t be bothered getting their nice clothes dirty? Too distracted with other things going on around them at the time? I can only guess at the reasons, and there were probably almost as many reasons as there were people…they wanted to pick on their terms. So all the easy fruit was taken, but so much of the good stuff was left behind. If it was too hard to get at…meaning the picker didn’t want to put forth the effort…the fruit didn’t get picked.
If there had been money involved, maybe some of that may have changed…folks might have been a little more focused, tried a little harder, had some skin in the game…I don’t know. Religion is free too, pretty much there just for the asking...people tend to pick the low hanging fruit and walk on in that regard, too. Or people pick the berries that appeal to them, the ones on the easy side of the bush. Or maybe if they are tall, the only see the berries on the top. Maybe if they are short, they only see the berries in the middle. Few people brush aside the leaves to see if they missed any. I can’t help but think some people only saw berries that grabbed their attention because the sunlight happened to hit them just right. Some people cruised through only looking for “perfect” berries…whatever that means to them.
I’m no expert, and I’m seriously not casting any judgment, but the thought did occur to me that maybe they didn’t have the drive, the want, the will, the urge to *really* pick berries, to do a good and thorough job. Not patting myself on the back, but if the Divine were like a blueberry bush, and all we had to do was pick the berries…what kind of picker would you be?
