Today I opted to pick high bush cranberries. I originally planned to take Tinni and go to Pat and Ray’s field – state land, but this is what we call it. But I first decided to take a look at the hill that borders our guest cabin. I didn’t expect to find many berries there because our neighbors, the professional adventures, are home and Pete said that yesterday, one of them was picking. I soon discovered I was wrong, and that the berries are in great abundance this year. This is because we got numerous days of rain followed by numerous days of sunshine; obviously this resulted in a bumper crop.
At first glance, I saw nothing. I wandered around the brush for a bit and then spotted a handful of red berries. After zeroing in on a few, other berries seemed to make themselves visible. It’s usually this way – my theory is that the eyes and the brain interact in such a way as to make subsequent finds apparent.
I had a two-gallon pail – it was the empty Horseshoer’s Secret bucket. I soon realized that this was not the best choice – it was too large to hold in my free hand. I should have done as Pete has been doing when picking raspberries and, using a dog leash, fasten the bucket around my neck. Alas, I was feeling lazy and did not return to the cabin where ordinarily I would have rigged something up.
For the most part, the picking went smoothly. I moved from bush to bush, my direction being determined by the next sighting. The berries were pretty much chest height so I did not have to bend over or kneel as I do when picking low bush blueberries.
It started to rain and I considered calling it quits. Then the rain stopped and the sun came out again. I took a mid-pick break and checked in on our guest cabin. Our guests left it as they found it, nice and tidy.
I was on the far side of the cabin, on a very steep part of the hill when it happened. I set my bucket on the slope and it tipped over. I lost about one third of my harvest. I calmly scooped up most of what fell out, and resumed picking.
I quit three hours into it. I started at 1 p.m. and it was 4 p.m. Time for lunch. My pail was a little more than half full. Now Pete is making high bush cranberry juice, which he is going to dilute with water and put in glass jars. I am going to add it to my smoothies.
I’ll be curious to see how many jars we end up with.
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