It is the second last day of
July today, and raspberry picking should be long over. However, the cold, damp
spring that we endured here in the Fraser Valley delayed the crop, and so this
year we will have gorgeous, red raspberries on the bushes into the month of
August. Because of the long raspberry season, I thought that I would share this
story now. When I read it to my family, my brother Fred immediately responded,
“That’s not how it went.” But my sister Lenora said, “That’s exactly what
happened.” As for me, I have to invoke the storywriter’s proviso: “This is my
story, and every word of it’s true—except for the parts that aren’t.” I hope
that you enjoy this story.
If you check the From Oma’s
Kitchen blog, there is a wonderful Chocolate Raspberry Mousse recipe in the
August 2011 pages. My cousin Selma also assures me that she will put up a good
recipe for homemade raspberry jam later on in the fall.
Neil Klassen
Raspberry Picking With Fred
Three
quick knocks on the bedroom door were followed by my father’s voice: “Neil,
it’s time to get up. We want to get out to the field while it’s still cool.”
I
groaned, thrashed about in the sheets, and slowly rolled over to squint at the
little alarm clock on my night stand. Five-fifty. Oh man—only one week into
summer vacation, and I was getting up earlier than ever—to go pick raspberries.
What a waste of these beautiful summer days. I dropped my right hand over my
eyes to try to block out a little of the bright, early morning summer sun that
slanted through the curtains of my bedroom window, and rolled back over to try
to get just a little more sleep.
A minute
later, another knock on the door; then it opened a crack. Dad peered into the
room and spoke a little sharply, “Come on. You know you need to get up, now do
it.” And he was gone.
I
grumpily got up. Almost without looking I pulled on my field clothes—frayed,
faded cutoffs, a t-shirt and an old dress shirt over than. Then I slouched out
of my bedroom to the kitchen table and slumped into a chair.
Dad was
bouncing about in the kitchen, whistling and making porridge. He turned and
quickly plopped a large ladle full of porridge into each of five bowls, which
he passed across the table to me and to each of my two brothers and two
sisters. Glumly and silently we dumped sugar and milk onto the porridge and,
mechanically, began eating.
Undeterred
by our behaviour, Dad continued with his cheerful whistling, stopping only to
comment, “It’s a beautiful day out there. Let’s get going and maybe we can be
done before the day gets really hot. Come on, eat up and let’s go.”
We ate.
We finished. We brushed our teeth. We grabbed our lunch—a large Tupperware
container with sandwiches and cookies—and our jug of lemonade, headed out to
the family station wagon, and piled into it.
As the oldest,
I got the front passenger seat. My younger siblings crowded into the back seat,
arguing with each other a little, demanding more space. Finally, Rachel came to
the front and sat between Dad and me.
As Dad
drove us to the berry field I stared out the window, not seeing the landscape
that passed before my eyes, thinking to myself glumly, “What a rotten way to
spend the summer. I’ll probably have to go raspberry picking on my thirteenth
birthday. Shoot, what a rotten way to spend the summer.” I felt throughly sorry
for myself and angry for the injustices I was being made to suffer.
We
arrived at the berry field and Dad parked the car. Slowly we emerged from the
car and followed him into the berry field. We each took a flat off the large
stack, making sure that there were twelve clean, empty hallocks in the flat.
Particularly, I couldn’t stand it if there were a moldy berry stuck to the
bottom of one of the hallocks.
Dad asked
the gum-snapping, cowboy-hatted field boss, “Where do we start this morning?” I
didn’t pay attention to the answer but simply followed Dad as he headed into
the field to find the rows that had been assigned to us. “Let’s see if we can
each get five flats before the day is over, okay?” he enthused.
We didn’t
respond. Five flats was an awful lot, especially since the berries had not yet
peaked. We sorted ourselves out into three two-person teams—Dad and our little
sister Rachel, Fred and me, Lenora and Berny, and we began to pick. Dad seemed
please, because, “It’s just past seven and here we are.”
The day
was still cool when we began, and the dark green leaves on the raspberry canes
glistened with dew. For a little while it felt good to be out there before the
heat of the day. The first berries that I tasted were sweet and juicy too. But
as the morning wore on, the dew found its way into the innumerable small
scratches that the tiny thorns on the raspberry canes inflicted on my arms,
bared because I’d rolled up my sleeves. The scratches began to swell, itch and
then sting. I rolled my sleeves back down and tried to ignore the stinging.
Dad
continued to cheer us on with stories of his idle, misspent summers as a kid:
“When I was a boy growing up in Winnipeg, we didn’t have anything worthwhile to
do in summer. We’d spend our days bothering the gardener at Kildonan Park. Or
we’d hang out with friends, doing nothing in particular. You have it so good.
You are actually doing something important by helping to bring in the harvest.
Think of it. This farmer would be unable to make a living if you weren’t here,
helping to pick these berries.”
We didn’t
get it. “I’d love to spend a summer just hanging out with my friends,” I
grumbled quietly to myself, “Sounds great to me.” I settled into a kind of
gloomy martyrdom as we slowly progressed down our row.
Dad
reminded us, “Be sure you pick clean. Get well into the bushes, look high and
low, and get all of the berries. The ones you leave behind will be dry or moldy
by the next time we pick this row.” I thought that the most important reason to
pick clean was to avoid having one of the field bosses drop by and embarrass me
with a picking demonstration, given loudly enough to advise other pickers about
my sloppy habits.
My
brother Fred was picking opposite me that morning. Driven and competitive like
Dad, he soon filled his flat. He took the flat out of the stand, glanced across
the berry bushes at me and asked, “How many berries do you have?”
“Ten
hallocks, almost eleven,” I answered.
“I’ve got
a full flat,” he announced smugly, and headed down the row to take the berries
to the shed, and have his card punched.
I was a
little annoyed. Fred always had to be first. He worked hard at it, I knew. On
the other hand, many things came easily for him and he often was first, just
because he was good.
An idea
began to form in my brain. I went down the row just a little and peered through
the bushed at my sister Lenora and asked her, “Hey! How many berries do you
have?”
“Almost a
flat,” she answered.
“Here,” I
said, extending a full hallock of berries toward her, “give my your last empty
basket. Don’t tell Fred. Quick, before he gets back.”
Lenora
looked surprised, then flashed me a conspiratorial grin, took the berries and
gave me the empty hallock. I took it, went quickly back to my flat of berries,
stuck the hallock into the empty spot in my flat, and kept on picking. When
Fred got back, Lenora suddenly picked up her flat and headed to the berry shed.
I glanced over the bushes at Fred. He looked a little surprised but didn’t say
anything, and settled back into picking. In a few minutes I, too, had a full
flat and I quickly took it to the berry shed, got my card punched and hurried
back to continue picking. It was going to be a fun morning and, with any luck,
we’d make Fred crazy.
The next
flat went more quickly. Fred got ahead of me on his side of the row, and so I
was able to sneak down the row unnoticed to bring Lenora a couple of hallocks
of berries, and so Fred was really startled when she picked up her flat to head
toward the shed at the same time as he. He took a look at the berries in her
row, convinced that they had to be larger and more plentiful than the berries
in his row. They weren’t and he was at a loss to understand how she had caught
up to him in this undeclared race. He rushed to the berry shed with his flat of
berries, had his card punched, grabbed a flat, hurried back and settled down to
some serious picking.
Dad had
an idea of what was going on but, glad we’d found a productive way to amuse
ourselves, he didn’t say anything.
Lenora got
back to her berries and also began picking with more intensity than before.
This was going to be a good game. I was ready to take my flat to the shed. I
almost ran there, dropped off my flat, got my card punched, hurried back,
picked a few hallocks and took two of them down the row to give them to Lenora.
She took them quickly and silently, and gave me two empties. I hurried back to
my flat and picked hard so that when Fred asked me, “How many berries do you
have now?” I was able to answer, “Two hallocks—almost.”
He
gloated a little and responded, “I have four full ones.”
Then he
called down the row, “Lenora, how many hallocks do you have?”
She
called back, “Five and a bit.” Fred became visibly agitated. He went down the
row and demanded that Lenora show him. When she did, he became even more
agitated. He went back to his flat and began picking with increased intensity.
“This is
gonna be better than I thought” I thought to myself, and grinned. A few minutes
later I went down the row and silently passed another hallock of berries
through the bushes to Lenora. She smiled conspiratorially, took the hallock and
gave me the empty, and we both began picking again, silently and with great
focus. When she suddenly had a flat to take to the shed, she made a point of
calling out to Fred, “How many berries do you have?”
“Ten
hallocks—almost a flat,” he called back.
“Good for
you,” she yelled back, as if to encourage him.
There was
a moment of silence and Fred yelled, “How many do you have?”
“Just
finished my flat.”
There was
a long moment of silence. Then Fred came pounding down the row, demanding to
see. When he saw her flat of berries, full and slightly heaped up, he became
really upset. “Jeepers!” he exclaimed, and ran back to his flat, to pick with
renewed intensity.
By
lunchtime, Fred had four full flats. Lenora had four and a half. Fred insisted
on staying in the field just a little longer, saying that he’d eat lunch later.
But Dad said, “No, you’re going to have to eat with us now, because when we’re
done I am going to lock the rest into the car and that’ll be it.” I think Dad
was enjoying this whole thing, too.
We sat in
the shade of one of the big cherry trees in the back yard, along with many of
the other pickers, to eat our sandwiches and drink our lemonade. After a cookie
or two each, we stretched out for a few minutes to enjoy the shade. Fred
didn’t. He finished quickly and headed back to the field. The rest of us
followed a few minutes later, and the games began again.
Another
picker in a nearby row tuned his transistor radio to LG73, and we began picking
to some of the summer’s top hits: the Beatles’ “I Feel Fine,” the Pacemakers’
“Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying,” and Chad and Jeremy’s “Summer Sun” played
thinly in the background, breaking up now and again. Dad, who didn’t approve of Rock & Roll, made some disparaging
comments about the music, but when we didn’t respond he dropped it, and we all
settled into more intense picking. Fred, determined to beat Lenora, was picking
very hard, head down and completely focused. I managed several more times to
give berries to Lenora, so that she stayed just a few hallocks ahead of Fred,
who only got angrier and more determined.
The
afternoon went quite quickly. We had very little conversation, but a lot of
secret enjoyment each time Lenora took a flat to the shed just a few minutes
before Fred. By mid-afternoon she was more than half a flat ahead of him, and
he kept exclaiming, “Jeepers!” The rest of us just grinned, privately, and kept
quiet.
At about four
o’clock I took another two hallocks down the row to Lenora and was passing them
through the bushes when all of a sudden Fred was there.
“I knew
it!” he exclaimed angrily, “I knew you guys were cheating!”
I turned
around and tried to put on a face of injured and bewildered innocence. “What
are you talking about?” I asked, slowly, trying hard to act as though nothing
at all was going on.
“You’ve
been giving Lenora your berries, and that’s cheating!” Fred was practically
jumping up and down with indignation.
“What are
you talking about?” I was repeating myself.
“What are
you doing right now?” he demanded.
“Well,
I’m giving her a couple of hallocks, yeah, but....” I hoped I wasn’t going to
have to lie to him.
“You’ve
been doing that all day, haven’t you?” he asked, accusingly.
I saw a
way out. I could deny the specifics of the charge. “Not all day. I have not
been doing this all day. I’ve been picking hard. So has Lenora. So have you.”
“But
you’ve been helping her. You have, haven’t you?”
The game was
up. I suddenly exploded into laughter. “Haw, haw, haw, yeah, I have been, and
it was a lot of fun, and it made you crazy, didn’t it? Boy, it sure made you
work hard. We really got to you, didn’t we?” I was laughing hard now, and so
was Lenora. Fred looked ready to punch me, and I was laughing so hard I
couldn’t have defended myself if he’d tried.
Fortunately,
Dad sensed what was going on and came over at once. “Let it be, Fred, it was a
good joke, and you’ve picked more today than ever before. It was worth
it—you’ve set a new personal best.”
Fred
began to demand to know, “How much did you give Lenora? Here...” and he began
to pull full hallocks of berries out of her flat and thrust them at me... “You
have to take these back, and we’re gonna figure out how much you gave her, and
you have to take them all back. That’s fair.”
I was
laughing and wiping my eyes with the back of my raspberry stained hand, unable
to say anything. This was better than I’d ever imagined.
Dad
intervened. “Fred, let it be. It’s okay.”
“But it’s
not fair. I picked more than Lenora, and our cards should show that. Neil
cheated when he gave berries to her. He cheated.”
“If Neil
wanted to give his berries away to Lenora, so what? He can do that.”
“Then he
should give me some, too!” Fred demanded.
I saw my
opportunity. “Okay, here are two hallocks for you, Fred.” I pulled them out of
my flat and rather grandly offered them to him.
He looked
at me cooly and evenly, and said, “I’d never accept them. I don’t cheat.” And
with that, he turned his back on me and walked to his flat. “I pick what I
pick, and I get credit for what I pick,” he shot back over his shoulder, and he
began again to pick.
“Do you
think he’s really mad at us?” asked Lenora.
“Yeah, I
do,“ I responded, “But so what? We helped him to achieve his personal best. He
should be grateful.”
And in
the end, he was. Fred picked eight flats that day. Lenora picked almost nine,
but gamely admitted that it was probably closer to seven and a half, when you
subtracted my contributions. Me, I did about seven flats—it would have been
almost eight if I’d kept all my berries. But I’d had one of the best days of
the summer.
*****
For several more summers
after this one, my siblings and I continued to pick berries. Eventually, I began to appreciate
that this was important work, and that the growers really were grateful
for the help that we gave them to bring in the crop. Over the years, I picked
raspberries, beans and blueberries.
Unfortunately, most
raspberry picking is mechanized now, and I was only once able to take my two sons
into a blueberry field for the berry picking experience. However, both of them
have worked in various aspects of the food growing/producing industry here in
the Fraser Valley: working in a cucumber greenhouse, picking eggs and processing
ducks on a duck farm, retailing wonderful produce at the Lepp Farm Market, and
latterly working on a chicken farm. They both have an appreciation of the work
that goes into food production, and they both are proud of the work that they
are able to do.
