I have a funny way of marking the passage of time on the Island – or at least of my time. With every year, I discover more and more of the hidden treasures that lie in the Vineyard woods and fields. Getting to know the landscape, feeling it in my bones, is strangely comforting. It hasn’t happened overnight, but the more I’ve explored, the more I’ve felt at home.
I’ve learned so many things – which trails are lined with wild blueberries, how to tell the difference between wild roses and wild raspberries before they bloom, what the beach plum blossoms look like in springtime, when a blackberry is ripe enough to pick, where to find wild cranberries and Russian olives and even hazelnuts – that I now look forward to each season and each year with both nostalgia and anticipation.
Though it may sound odd, berry picking is one of the ways I’ve settled into my life on the Vineyard.
When I first arrived on the Island, farmer Andrew Woodruff still had his CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) at Thimble Farm in Vineyard Haven. Coming from my suburban bubble on the mainland, I barely knew what a CSA was, but once I found out, I was all in. I signed up tout de suite and paid in the spring (the whole idea is to give farmers some income when they need it most) and then visited the farm every week to pick up my goodies and go out into the fields to pick my own green beans, sunflowers, and raspberries.
Raspberries! The most delicious thing in the whole world – I couldn’t believe I was out there in the sunshine with a bucket, navigating the thorny canes to pluck off these sweet, plump fruits, trying not to eat them all before I got to the car.
It got better. The next summer, friends took me to their favorite (secret) blueberry patch. And then another, at the opposite end of the Island. I was amazed to see how many highbush blueberries (the kind you would expect to see in a friend’s garden) thrive in the dappled sunlight of our oak groves and pine-y sandplains.
A few more springs went by before I understood that I could keep an eye out for those sweet bell-shaped flowers in May that promised blueberries come summer. I had to look up and around to see them, to hunt for the twisted limbs and familiar vase-shape of an old blueberry bush, but I eventually found them and took note.
Soon I was looking down too. Those flower bells – in miniature – seemed to be everywhere on the paths I walked. These days it’s a game to me – to see if I can collect the wild lowbush blueberries before the birds get them. They are literally everywhere in July. Only recently – since I downloaded a fun plant app called PictureThis – have I understood that a lot of what I thought were lowbush blueberries are actually huckleberries. Huckleberries have skin the color of a midnight sky and some tiny but noticeable seeds inside, while the little blueberries are that lovely silvery-violet when ripe. Often I see the two growing right next to each other.
But the best berry picking I’ve ever done coincided with my move to a farm a few years after I arrived on the Vineyard. The property included an old stone foundation from a barn that had long ago vanished, leaving the stone walls to gradually succumb to the whims of wild vegetation, including a thicket of black raspberries that were so well hidden even the birds couldn’t find them. Every Fourth of July we could count on the first black raspberries to ripen, and as soon as I had enough of them I’d make black raspberry ice cream. (You can also make the delicious ice cream with a combination of store-bought raspberries and blackberries.)
From the farm, a public path – punctuated by highbush blueberries in various spots – led over a stream and along a pasture fence, where wild blackberries tangled with the barbed wire and ripened later in the season. Farther down were some old raspberry canes that still offered a few fruits every year. It was berry heaven over there, and an outing on a warm evening to collect a few blackberries made me feel like I had finally found the rural life I’d been looking for.
These days I’ve put down roots in what I hope will be my forever Vineyard home, and wouldn’t you know it, there are wild blueberries and huckleberries all over the place. It took me a while to figure this out, to explore the oak-y backyard – and to convince my (now) husband not to mow the “lawn” (really a weedy field that is our front yard).
As the lawn grew out last year, much to my glee I discovered a carpet of blueberry plants rising from the ground to grab their ray of the sunshine. The berries were plentiful – not enough to make a pie on any given day, but plenty to snack on when I went out to explore the field. Later in the summer that unmowed “lawn” revealed goldenrod, asters, daisies, and a host of other interesting wild plants. And I made another discovery in a thicket at the end of our driveway – raspberry canes! I’m not sure if I’ll ever get anything out of them; I think it’s time to plant my own.
I still go back to that blackberry patch near the old farm; I’ve taken my husband with me and he, too, eagerly anticipates the day we find them ripening.
And when we cobble together enough blackberries and raspberries (occasionally helped along by store purchases), we make a fantastic version of everyone’s favorite summer dessert – a fruit crisp. Raspberries are an example of a fruit that surprisingly gets more flavorful when cooked, and combined with blackberries, the two make an intensely satisfying filling. To kick things up even more, I flavor the filling with lots of vanilla, both light brown sugar and maple syrup, and a bit of ground cardamom. I’ve always liked the combination of vanilla, maple, and cardamom with berries – cardamom adds a tart and spicy flavor, almost like a combination of lemon, mint, and pepper – but you can substitute cinnamon or ginger for the cardamom if you like. The buttery oat crumble topping can get a few chopped toasted almonds added in too.
The bottom line: be sure to look up, look down, and all around on your Vineyard walks, but don’t worry about collecting enough berries for a crisp. Buy what you need, because you don’t want to miss that taste of summer.
