A Patch of Berries

Yesterday Richard and I went on a splendid date. We got up early and went hunting for blackberries. First we ventured to a beautiful park with a small river/large stream that was rumored to have wild berries growing alongside it. What we really like about this park is the covered bridge that ties two parts of the park together. It’s really neat. Unfortunately all the berries at the park were no longer producing, but our search wasn’t in vain as we did find a “few” ripe raspberries along one of the roads on the way out of the park.

We didn't expect to go hunting for berries too long, but I really wanted to get blackberries from the forest area just south of State College were we were first exposed to and ate wild berries. This is the area where we spent a few days with the youth on the Pioneer Trek last July. For the most part the area is lined with trees and you follow a gravel road up and down forested mountains. It's a lot different driving through the area rather than walking the area, but either way it's beautiful. We didn't have to drive far to find tons of raspberries along the road. The patch of berries we picked stretched 30+yards, making it a bit bigger than just a patch of berries. We really got into picking and kept climbing through and into the bushes to get more ‘ripe’ berries. I’m sure we were quite a sight to behold. As you can imagine, we didn’t exactly come out of the experience unscathed. Raspberry bushes are lined with THORNS (large and small). There are also a lot of other "things" that grow with them that have even bigger thorns too. By the end our arms looked like we were clawed by cats. The thorns seemed to like my hair too as the thorns kept catching and pulling it. But every scratch was all worth it!!! We have a lot of raspberries. After making a serious dent in the berry bushes we once again went looking for blackberries. Although we didn’t find any good patches of blackberries, someone at church informed us of a road by the airport that has blackberries growing on it. We checked out the road after church and it looks like we’re going to pick berries once again this week. I can’t wait to make some homemade wild raspberry and blackberry jam. YUM!

The morning was quite mystical with fog covering the entire valley. At 64 degrees, the temperature was just right for picking. By 11:00 a.m. the fog rose, and so did the temperature, making it a sunny day. I finished the day making a baby quilt for a friend and Richard went fishing for bass and catfish (he caught both). I guess you could say it was a great day in Central Pennsylvania.