Berry Picking on Sauvie Island

Jude, Granny, and Gus with the day's pickins
Mt. St. Helens in the background

U-Picking on Sauvie Island

http://www.sauvieislandfarms.com/

It’s a perfect day for berry picking

So we head out to Portland’s farmland

Right in the middle of the Columbia River: Sauvie Island

Skirting the farm road, the boys and I zigzag through the fields

for a closer look at all that is happening here:

A Patchwork of crops

Dainty moths dance above the gray-green cabbages

Cucumbers sport emerging yellow blossoms,

Dahlia stems, stoic and strong, display brilliant orbs

of flamingo, royal velvet, and flame orange.

Flower gardens

Even the dandelions are noticed and useful…

Auggie makes a necklace out of the stems.

With pieces of dandelion stem, make circles and connect end to end,
one inside the other. Auggie invented this himself!

Suddenly a gush of irrigation spray

Smacks us from behind,

Cooled by the irrigation spray
With socks like that, I'll never lose Jude, even in fields of green.

And we take off running for the top of the hill

Destination? The berry patches

…marion, boysen, rasp, and blue…. berries!

Raspberries!

The boys worry about the first juice stains

but the sweet taste of raspberries collapsing on their tongues

wipes all cares away, and we eat and pick and pick and eat

until our hands and mouths and shirts

 are a parade of red, blue and purple juice stains.

Blueberries...kaplink, kiplank, kiplunk!

Summer’s bounty fills our bellies as the chattering of happy voices

mixes with birdsong and a distant hum of the farm’s tractor.

As the afternoon sun slides west

 a cool breeze dries our sweaty clothes,

Cloud wisps

wash the summer sky

and pull our eyes out beyond the patchwork of meadows and crops

to the snowy peaks of the Cascade Range.

“Do you think we could make a pie, Granny?” Jude asks,

nudging a hankering I’d been playing with all afternoon,

“Of course!” I answer,

And, after a visit to the sandy beach for a swim in the Columbia,

Gus at the edge of the Columbia River

We head home

To pie baking

And more fun.

I can make a berry pie....if someone will help pick the fruit!