Bramblings: We are raspberries

By BECKY NELSON
By Becky Nelson

Raspberry pick your own is in full swing at the farm. We have made the experience as COVID-19 safe as we could this year with a wash station, hand sanitizer, a shield between staff and customers and self-serve access to supplies and pack-up of picked berries. We are doing what we can to keep ourselves and others safe. Raspberry season always brings a lot of changes to the farm atmosphere as the berries don’t wait for anyone to ripen, so we had to quickly adapt to the “new normal.” Berries come on quickly and give us an intense month of picking that we have to balance with other crops and responsibilities at the farm. We usually are struggling to keep things manageable with vegetable picking and maintenance and hay-making, but the showery weather has kept us from the hay fields and the very cold spring delayed field crop production. In some ways, the bad weather is a blessing as we were in the midst of a drought here, but it seems it is always a struggle of some sort at the farm.

As I have written in the past, I always think about philosophical things when I pick raspberries as it is a prolonged process. Raspberries are actually fascinating little packets of potential. Each little lobe of juicy deliciousness contains a seed — ready to repopulate if need be. We have raspberries growing in odd places all over the farm where birds have dropped the seeds in their droppings in a convenient little fertilized packet. That potential new plant has found root and the escapees from the berry patch feed many wild critters away from the farm.

We have four different varieties of raspberry and each holds its own unique properties. Prelude, the first to ripen, is a very large and firm berry with flavor on the mild side. We were a bit worried that the drought and late spring would affect the berries, but they ripened right on cue with an incredible crop just hanging like grapes in some places. The next to ripen and just pulling into full production is kilarney. Like my father did, I enjoy this berry the most with its classic raspberry taste and juiciness unlike other berries. It is a little softer than the prelude, but makes me think of my dad every time I pick them, so is my sentimental favorite as well.

Just on the heels of kilarney are boyne. These berries are a bit more firm and a bit smaller than the kilarney, and hold well in storage. I like our berry pickers who pick for our retail market to pick these, as they resist mold better than the tasty kilarney and the prelude. Super for fresh eating, they are smaller than the other varieties and are great in muffins or for cooking, too. This is my “backup” berry as well, as it is hardy and usually suffers less winter kill than other varieties. They are also a bit more drought tolerant, so these doing well this summer.

At the end of the season, just as the kilarney and boyne winding down a bit, our fourth variety, latham ripen. These plants are amazing. The berries are fairly soft and don’t hold as well for wholesale or retail sale, but they are abundant with jumbles of berries covering the tall plants with amazing clusters of berries. Perfect for pick your own with the berries bending to the edges of the planting and fill a basket pretty quickly without much picking effort. Diversity is the key, with each variety carrying different properties and ripening times and making an extended picking period a possibility for us.

Just like people, the berries carry different qualities. Size, growth pattern, appearance, taste…all are different, yet all are important in the bigger planting. Just like people. All different, all with differing appearance, habits and patterns, and all better at performing some things than other. It is not ours to judge because of these differences, as all are successful in their missions — some at being raspberries and some at being people. In this year of the COVID-19 pandemic, race tensions, police overstep, job loss, economic struggle and political division, it might just be time to think of ourselves as raspberries and farmers. We are all important in our own way and deserve the respect and the nurture of every other. If one needs fertilizer or irrigation, we farmers must help it along so it can grow as well as all others if we are going to have the best crop possible. It is much easier to see the value of the raspberry if we see and understand the unique feature of each variety and the particular needs of the plants in the bigger planting.

Becky Nelson is co-owner of Beaver Pond Farm in Newport, New Hampshire. You can contact her through the farm page on Facebook and Instagram, visit the retail store or email her at [email protected].