An Unbelievably Satisfying Moment

Picking the first blackberries of the year proved to be as phantasmagorically satisfying as an experience could be.

They're still just slightly red when you pick them right now; usually, folk wait until the red has turned to complete blackness (hence, "blackberry"), but we are 1) not patient enough for that, and 2) perfectly happy with that tart little bite at the front end of the berry experience.

There are few things in life as tasty as berries from your own backyard.  The fact that they also double as a thorny hedge is just a bonus.

We'll probably have several buckets of berries by the end of the week (you can see all the red ones on the vines right now, and they turn very, very quickly); we've already noticed numerous canes volunteering their way up in between the current plants, so we'll have to mark carefully when we pick the berries -- the idea is to prune this year's producing canes all the way back to the ground some time after harvest; next year's berries are on the empty canes from this year.

They are about a month away from harvest, but we are also going to get our first production quality wild grapes this year.  We probably won't get enough for wine-making, but we will almost definitely get enough to try our hands at some mustang jam, which will be quite an experience.  Hopefully, next summer, we will be producing our first batch of home vinted dark black cheese accoutrement.

Which brings us to the week's big rumination....  We want to make our own cheese.  But what do you have to have in order to make cheese?  Some form of dairy product, right?  Like, say, goat's milk?  Which would require... let us think... what is it?  Oh, yeah, a goat!

There's no telling exactly how many complications we will run into along the road to goat ownership -- a tall fence around the pond area, for one thing, not to mention getting permits and all that legal folderol -- but when the proprietors of Myrtle's place set their hearts on something related to self-sufficiency, we've come to expect that it will happen, sooner or later.

Just witness the berries!  Two years ago, we planted puny root stock, and now we are swimming in juicy, sweet, tart little berries!

An incredibly satisfying experience, indeed.  Now we just need to make some good mustang wine, bake a nice blackberry cobbler, and eat a good home-grown salad topped with home-grown feta.  If you can think of a better way for us to be spending our time, by all means let us know.

In the meantime,

Happy farming!