Life as a Country Girl in the South: Spring and Summer Bring Berries, Plums, Apples and Peaches

There are wild strawberries growing at the edge of my yard, and before you ask, yes, they really are strawberries, not snake berries. There are also blackberries, amongst the honeysuckles, but they won't be ripe for a good month or so, maybe longer.

I was lucky enough to have grandparents who lived in the country, and all the grandchildren grew up eating these berries straight from the patch or bush. There were also plums, apple trees, wild cherries and muscadines, at least one peach tree, a hickory nut tree, a couple of persimmon trees, and a fig tree or two.

Figs and Peaches

I don't remember ever eating the figs, and the peach tree didn't produce much at all; in fact, when my older sister got the only peach off the tree one year, I walked up to the chair my mother was sitting in at my grandmother's and said, "Mama, Kerry got a peach." But, I must have been distraught over not getting a peach, because it was my aunt in the chair, and I'd mistaken her for my mother! Much to my chagrin, everyone laughed--and the peach wasn't even my favorite fruit!

Strawberries and Memories

One year, my sister, Laurie and I were picking strawberries from a patch beside the garden when our grandfather rushed by, headed for the woods. We asked him where he was going and he said he was going home. "Paw-Paw, home is that way," we said pointing in the opposite direction. He paid us no attention and kept going, so we gleefully ran to tell the adults Paw-Paw didn't know where home was. As children, we didn't know anything about senility and just thought he was being funny.

Go Ahead, Taste that Persimmon!

The plums were all over the place, and tasted best before they fully ripened, when they were soft and juicy, but still tangy. My cousin, Cricket, tricked me by telling me persimmons were delicious, but they weren't ripe and I took a big bite out of a green one. My mouth must have stayed puckered for an hour, and I don't think I've had a persimmon since.

Danger in the Woods

Of course, we had to be careful traipsing around the woods. My cousin, Debbie, was bitten by a copperhead when she was just a toddler, but she's the only one in the family who was ever bitten by a snake, at least that I heard about.

Several of us remember seeing our grandmother bring a hoe down on a snake in the middle of a field and killing it; I don't remember if we were picking blackberries or what, but that snake was a goner. There wasn't much she could do about the ant, though, that happened to be snacking on a blackberry that I plucked from the bush and popped into my mouth. It made its presence known by clamping on to my lip.

Eating Berries and Making Pies

At times we'd put milk and sugar on a bowl of berries and eat them, or someone would make a "pie" by mixing a cup of sugar, a cup of milk and a cup of flour with the berries and baking it. But there was a deep dish pie that my grandmother used to make that was called sonker, and was a hundred times better.

I'd love to have some of that sonker this year--guess I better get ready to pick some blackberries.