Tag: raspberries

The first raspberries, the last strawberries, and other updates

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Mary Jane made it to the raspberries for another year! I hoped she would this spring when I was thinning the branches. She sat with me for hours, looking hopeful for raspberries. I think raspberries might be her favorite–maybe even more than watermelon. This morning, when I picked raspberries for breakfast, I kept out a handful just for her. She gobbled them up with satisfaction. I can tell she surely knows how much I love her.

I am hopeful for the raspberries. They look really good this year, and we need a good year after our strawberries did not do so well. I don’t know if it was just a weird year or if our plants are about done. I think it’s the latter. We have had five great seasons with those plants. I read they should be replaced after three to five years, so I guess it’s time. I think we will try to replace them in the fall, so we can hopefully have berries again next summer. That’s a big task though. Hopefully, I will be up to it. And it wasn’t a terrible year for them. I still made two batches of jam and got five quarts frozen for the winter.

Things have been busy here on the farm this summer but not nearly as busy as usual. Ron has been slow and steady planting the garden and just finished planting the last of things this week. It’s the latest he’s ever finished planting, but COVID has take a toll on all of us for sure. And, with long COVID in mind, we have no music camps this summer for our son. He just rests a lot, sleeps a lot, and I can see that he tries to stay positive. It was hopeful that he started playing his cello again this week, though he has to pace himself and can’t play more than 15 minutes per day. Still, slow and steady, right?

I am less busy than usual with the chickens because we had no babies this year. It’s been hard. The babies always bring so much joy, so long COVID plus no baby chicks has equalled a bit of a tough summer. On the bright side, I have been working on a Swedish death cleanse (though I hope I am not dying anytime soon), and I have made amazing progress. My struggle is books though. How can I get rid of books? I have more work to do, but our home is feeling much better, much less cluttered.It’s very helpful to my mental state.

We have still have our son’s pet mouse, who requires a lot of attention because mice are social animals and need company. I have also learned that mice will eat pretty much as much as you give them, so our little mouse has grown a little chubby eating so many treats from the garden along with homemade bread. I knew we were in trouble the first time I gave him some homemade bread and a fresh strawberry on the same day. He was half asleep with the bread in his hand and the strawberry right next to him. I watched as he would wake up, take a few bites of each item, get a joyful look on his face, and go back to sleep. I also had no idea mice were SO expressive, but he is!

He has a wheel, but we are going to have to build a bigger space for him–and in the last two days, he’s just had his mouse food and lettuce. Poor baby!

I have also been writing, just not as much as I would like here in the blog. I am actually working on a book. It’s a collection of essays, some of which I am revising from old blog posts and some of which are new. I plan to call it Chicken Stories, and I hope it will be worthy of a read. We’ll see. I hope to have it finished by the end of December. I will take any and all advice as well as words of encouragement.

Tell me how you’re doing if you get a chance. How is your garden growing? How are your chickens? What are you learning this year? And do you know anything about raising a mouse?

Mary Jane, Raspberries, and Trying to Be a Good Human

~ Crystal Sands ~ 1 Comment

I haven’t written in a bit because it’s on right now for spring planting and preparation. I will have to write more about this soon, but Ron has had some health struggles related to his round with COVID. Tests are ongoing, and I am hopeful all will be well; however, he’s been moving slower than before, which means he needs more help to get the epic tasks of spring completed.

Last week, my task was to prune all the fruit trees and bushes. Pruning the blueberries is easy. Pruning the raspberries is tough because, as you know, raspberry bushes are prickly and mean. I have learned to wear a thick coat and thick gloves, but they still attack my hair. Sometimes, I just end up stuck. During harvest in June and July, I always wish for more raspberry bushes, but when I am pruning, I am thankful we have just about a 25-foot row. The whole process is normally very frustrating to me, but it wasn’t too bad this year because I had good company.

Mary Jane loves raspberries more than I can express. She has two favorite foods that I have discovered–raspberries and oatmeal with raisins. Come to think of it, maybe it’s just raisins, but raspberries are her joy every summer.

She is doing pretty well despite her very old age and meat bird DNA. If she makes it to age 7, which happens in just three weeks, I’m convinced she has to be close to a record for a Freedom Ranger meat bird. I mean, she’s definitely showing her age, and I think surely she won’t make it through a long, hot summer. However, we switched feed to some awesome organic feed I found from Vermont, and it seems to have given her an extra little boost. It’s really good food, and Mary Jane has a really strong will to live, which, if you follow this blog, you know so well. It seems like a hopeful combination. Mary Jane will turn 7 on June 1.

Anyway, I was down on the ground fighting through the prickly branches to get to the back side of our row of when I saw Mary Jane watching me so hopefully.

“Oh, baby, I have no raspberries yet,” I told her. “But I’m doing this, so you can have some soon.”

And it was exactly that thought that made me feel less grumpy about all of the raspberry bush attacks on my hair. Seeing that hopeful face reminded me that there is joy coming. There is some pain now. My hair was pulled about a million times, and I was sweating like crazy on the hot day wearing my coat and gloves, and oh my gosh my poor back–but the reward is coming. Mary Jane reminded me of that, and she made me think about my place in the world.

This was my view from underneath the raspberries. That’s Mary Jane on the left and Arwen on the right. Mary Jane stayed with me the entire time I worked, more than two hours.

Last week, I also had the chance to see a beautiful symphony performed by the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. The symphony, entitled This Will Be Our Reply, was composed by the conductor of the BSO, Lucas Richman. The piece was powerful and important. Before the performance, Richman offered some background on the piece and said he was inspired to write it by a speech Leonard Bernstein gave after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In his speech, Bernstein said that the response to violence had to be to “make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.”

In the symphony, the inner circle of musicians, which is the first row of violins, violas, and cellos, play this beautiful music and come back to it throughout the piece, all the while, you hear the outer symphony doing something else, including bombs and guns going off from the percussion. When the bombs and guns got louder, the inner circle played even harder. It was an important work–a reminder that, though humans can be so terrible, we can also be so very beautiful. We just need the artists to remind us.

I was so moved by the experience that I was still thinking about it that day in the raspberry bushes. I was thinking about how I sometimes feel so inadequate. I have such a big heart for art and beauty and making the world better yet have no idea how to do it and really no talent for doing so.

But, as I talked to Mary Jane, I thought maybe that’s okay. I’m never going to make beautiful art that will be remembered throughout the ages, but I am going to raise beautiful raspberries. These raspberries are not only beautiful, but they are also healthy and contain cancer-fighting chemicals that, as of yet, humans cannot fully replicate. They are magic, for lack of a better word. I am going to give those raspberries to my family and some of my friends–and to Mary Jane.

To Mary Jane, I think I might just be the best of humans and a good friend to have around.

And that has to be worth something–maybe an awful lot.

Raspberries: Delicious But Mean (or How to Prune Raspberry Canes)

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Day 337 of 365

Today, I pruned the raspberries! It feels so good to be finished with that task because it’s slow, tedious work for me. I am new to raspberry growing, and I have to study a bit to know which canes are dead and which are good. Today, I only cut two live canes, which is good for me, but I am beat up pretty badly. I wore gloves, of course, but I had on a 3/4 sleeve shirt and paid a dear price for not changing shirts. I guess I am also a bit allergic to the thorns, as I not only have a lot of cuts, I am covered in welts.

I was so grumpy at those bushes. I was thinking the whole time, “Crystal, you have to think about the delicious raspberries you will have this summer.” I had to find my raspberry happy place in order to struggle through this chore. I was imagining raspberry muffins and raspberry jam. Pruning the raspberries has not been a favorite chore of mine, but since my sickness, I get tired more easily. Still, I did it, and I am proud.

If you are about to prune raspberries for the first or second time, I have advice that may be helpful. This was my third year pruning, and I made far fewer mistake cuts this year.

First of all, put on the proper clothes. You will need gloves and a long-sleeved shirt at the least, but a jacket would be better. Raspberries bushes are mean. The thorns will shred you, so be wiser than I was and leave no skin exposed. If you have long hair like I do, put it up. The canes will grab your hair.

I recommend a very long handled pruner to help you keep your distance. I got smacked in the face with a cane one time today, and it was not fun. Not fun at all. I guess the bad side of using a longer handle is the way it limits precision, so maybe there are pros and cons to the long handles.

When pruning, look for the canes that are a little rougher to cut. It will look like they have bark. This seems to be a pretty good indication, if you can’t tell otherwise. Sometimes, you can just tell. It looks definitely dead. And the good canes will have some color to them. I learned how to prune from my neighbor who is a master gardener, and I can tell you that you might be surprised at how many canes you have to remove every year. It’s quite a lot, but they grow back with great enthusiasm every summer and end up being full, beautiful bushes.

Pruning is so important. I have seen raspberry patches where the people didn’t have time to prune much, if at all, and my neighbor’s was raspberry patch has always been so much more beautiful. So I copy her as much as I can. I am fortunate to have a neighbor who is a master gardener.

Much was accomplished today.

Raspberries, Blueberries, Heat Waves, and Eastern Phoebes

~ Crystal Sands ~ Leave a comment

Day 73 of 365

Have I mentioned that it’s hot? Oh my goodness, I am a heat wimp. So is my son. We have a row of raspberry bushes that have been reasonably generous this year. We’ve eaten and shared quite a few raspberries, and I was able to make two batches of raspberry jam from our own berries. Still, if I want raspberry jam to send to my family in Texas and Oklahoma this Christmas, I have to go pick at local farms.

These are lovely berries from our own bushes.

This morning, we made the drive north to a berry farm we visit every year for extra raspberries. You can buy the raspberries already picked, an option my son would prefer, but it’s so much cheaper to pick your own. So we do. But this year was tough.

It was so hot out there, even though we made it to the farm by late morning. I swear, even my sweat was sweating. We all wore hats, and I brought water; however, my son and I struggled. My farmer husband was stoic–as he is. I, however, am not very stoic, and my son, well, let’s just say he believes wholeheartedly in making his feelings known on any situation. He ended up sitting in the car turning on the air conditioner periodically. I didn’t blame him. It was really too hot for heat wimps like us to be out there.

To make matters worse, the berries were rough. These were drought berries. It was heartbreaking to see them. They were small and felt almost dry on the bushes. They will be just fine for jam, but the picking took extra long because of the smallness of the berries.

As I picked and thought about what tough work berry picking is, I thought about farm workers, many of whom are migrant workers, who do this hard work day in and day out–bent over, picking berries in the heat, moving so quickly, certainly at ten times the rate in which I was picking today. How thankful we should all be to them. It’s terrible that, for the most part, our society isn’t thankful to them at all.

Years ago, I developed the philosophy that anyone who eats meat should have to be a part of the process of processing an animal for food at least one time in their lives in order to learn the reality of it. At the very least, there would be far less waste. But, today, it occurred to me that it would likely be very beneficial for people to also get to experience picking fruit in the summer heat. Wouldn’t it be great if we were all more grateful to farm workers?

Well, I could go on, but I should probably get off of my soap box for tonight.

When we got home, we had more of our own berries to pick, and our wonderful neighbor said we could pick a couple of quarts from her berries too. This is an extra treat. Our berries are fairly large, but she waters hers more frequently, and those raspberries are so big you can wear them on your finger tips!

After that, I decided I should take a look at our blueberries, and I made a heartbreaking discovery–the birds have eaten almost every single blueberry we had! I just about cried. I don’t think we are going to get a single blueberry this year, and we have four fairly large bushes. .

So we are going to certainly have to head back to the farm to pick. Last year, we used a net, but birds kept getting stuck in the net. Thankfully, we were able to save all of them, but we were away from home more this year and were hesitant to put up the net. We didn’t want to accidentally cause the death of a bird because we didn’t want to share our berries. Still, next year, we have to figure out something. We are always willing to share with nature, but the birds have gone too far this year. Little blueberry thieves.

On the bright side, Ron took my mind off of the blueberry situation by showing me a little melon growing in the garden. It’s magnificent, and it looks like more will be coming soon. I guess one perk of heat waves in the Maine summers is that we can finally grow melons in the garden.

I wrapped up the day with a little wildlife photography that led to a panic of sorts. It started with the notion that I was going to take a picture of the baby Eastern Phoebes on our deck. I talked to a neighbor who has a set of Phoebes who come back to a nest by her garage every year. She said she can get right up there and look in the nest, and everything is always fine. Well, this made me bold. I was determined to get a picture of those baby birds tonight.

So I found the step ladder and took this picture of the babies. Only the babies were sleeping, I guess, because they just look like little lumps of fluff and fuzz. I showed my picture to Ron, and he said, “Well, you’re the best wildlife photographer in the world!” I told him I didn’t need his sarcasm.

Still, I like the picture because you can really see what the nest is made of, and just as I thought, you can see the Boudica fur. I have found many nests on the ground over the years, and they are all lined with Great Pyrenees fur. I mean, why would you not use fur so soft and luxurious? I also like that you can see the leaves and moss and tiny twigs. And, maybe, I will try again tomorrow to get a picture of the babies while they are awake.

We’ll see though because, after I took the picture, I started to panic that I had somehow scared off the parents. When I went out tonight to see if I could see one of the parents back at the nest, there was nothing but the sleeping balls of fluff. I started researching and researching online. It’s very difficult to find specific information on Eastern Phoebes on the web. This is so frustrating to me, but I did find out in my researching that, unless it’s cold, most mama birds do not sleep on the nest with their babies. This was a surprise to me because chickens sleep with their babies every night.

So I learned something new and am hopeful I didn’t scare off the parents. I am determined to convince Ron that we need to set up a web cam on the nest next year. I mean, that would be fantastic? Of course, I imagine I would never get any work done because I would just want to sit and watch the Eastern Phoebes.