A Fruity Club

By Emily Toadvine

I joke that we’re going to start a fruit of the month club. The later part of May yielded strawberries. All of June was devoted to blueberry picking. July is looking like a sea of blackberries.

August gives us a reprieve. So far, September may yield apples. It’s just one apple tree and for the past two summers squirrels have devoured every last one of the apples. On a hot July morning, we discovered one of the squirrels scampering across the lawn with one of the green fruits in its mouth. More to say about said squirrel later, but for now we have focused on these varying berries for three months solid.

At first, picking berries is rewarding. As each berry explodes in your mouth, it yields a vision of summer days ahead. But that feeling of elation evaporates like the fog in the fields on summer mornings. After about three weeks of plotting out your days around the need to harvest before the sun starts to bake, the fruit of the month club membership becomes a very tight-knit one. It’s limited to only family with an occasional neighbor or co-worker allowed access.

“I know it’s a labor of love,” my daughter says, cutting the fruit in half for her 1-year-old and putting helpings on the lunch plates of the 3- and 7-year-old’s plates.

She has nailed the nature of berry harvesting. It is. A labor of love. I think about that as I coax a small thorn out of the pad of flesh on the tip of my index finger. This July fruit is not willingly agreeing to enter the bucket. The recipients of these harbingers of juicy jam will be limited to just family.

And yet, I know two jars of last year’s blackberry jam remain. Did we hoard it?

My husband is my fellow picker and even if he did skip town at the beginning of blueberry harvest, he has returned and made up for his absence. This will be deducted from his picker’s pay.

One of the plusses of picking is the contemplation time. I usually haul my phone to the blueberry patch and listen to Outlaw Country music while the blueberries fill my red receptacle. It’s a special picking tool that looks like a rake across one side and a handle. I think you’re supposed to rake it along the bush and capture a full container of berries. It doesn’t work this way. Each berry must be pulled off the bush, almost one by one.

The music helps the time pass faster. When the country music station won’t comply, I turn to alternative rock on Pandora. Some of it is a blast from the past with The Cure. I recall the first time I heard The Cure and Psychedelic Furs. Their music was released when I was in college. Why did it take several years for me to be introduced to it?

I think about how people connote the first time they hear a certain song with a special event or person. It’s true. I associate certain songs with a time or person in my life. We seemed more focused on the music when I was in my early twenties. We made mix tapes for special people. Not too long ago, I shucked all those cassette tapes, bought and homemade. I thanked the music for the journey and started just listening to whatever plays on Siruis XM. It’s a contemplative time as I move my gray, foldout stool from bush to bush for an hour and a half each night.

The berries ripen at all different stages. My brother advises the berry should roll off into your hand at the slightest touch. Otherwise, it’s not ready. Sometimes, the sunlight hits the berries so brightly that I can’t decide whether the color is the dark blue that signals it’s ready or if it needs to wait another day. From one bunch to the next, they’re never ready at the same time.

Although it’s a chore, I am grateful because it’s like when someone really wants a child and they’re having difficulty. For years, they keep trying, only to finally conceive, and then maybe even have another. For years, my harvest was a paltry three or so berries. Now, it’s a gallon and a half on the good nights. I am in shock at my success. And they make everyone in the fruit of the month club so happy.

So while it must remain a limited club, those in the inner circle know how treasured they are. The ones in the blackberry club are even more exclusive. Come on: thorns are involved. It’s a dangerous maneuver to bring these bad boys home in the bucket.

The beauty of the blueberry is it only needs to be washed and frozen. It mainly emerges from the freezer to become a pancake or smoothie. The blackberries need to evolve into something, a jam or pie. My jars of jam are super soupy, so I don’t try to share those failures with anyone outside my four walls.

I have to say that I know why the berries lay off a little bit in August. It’s because it’s tomato time. I was crying woe is me a couple of weeks ago. I’ll have to scour the country for tomatoes to can. I’ve done it. I looked close by my home at three separate places to score. One time, I had to travel 30 miles to buy tomatoes for the privilege of working them up. Ridiculous. Am I possessed by some farming demon?

That must be it. A farming demon has wiggled its way into my psyche and I can’t escape the call. That apple tree has been beckoning lately. Maybe the apple will join the fruit freezer and resurface as a pie on a cold winter’s day. I have hope and it’s only because of some violence that occurred. The poor squirrel that was merrily running away to savor its apple and my husband grabbed a pistol. My husband lit up the ground under the squirrel, firing one, then two and a third shot. The dead bandit lay not far from its treasure. One tooth mark showing in the apple’s broken skin. “I don’t see a mark on that pest,” my husband says. “It must have died from a concussion.”

Whatever the cause, the word is out. Don’t visit the apple tree. So, chances of a fall harvest look good.

After that, someone else, someone with a pear tree or a pumpkin patch, can take up the subscription.