ELDERBERRIES AND UNICORNS

Country living is bountiful in surprises, like elderberries. I only knew about elderberries because 

of our loved Les (now 98), who was always willingly to share his wonderful elderberry jam with all of the family. I did not know what he went through to get this interesting wild fruit until we added the Elderberry Jam project to our self-learning list.

The first step is to gather the berries along roadsides, creeks, and my favorite, an abundant growth along a railroad bed near us. Elderberries come to bloom in mid-July through August, but picking early is better because the competition for the fruit is intense. A multitude of birds, insects, little amphibians including shiny little snakes weaving among the bush branches also gather as soon as the hard red berry turns a soft deep purple.

On our first excursion in elderberry gathering we loaded the car with 5-gallon plastic buckets, heavy duty scissors, boots and rubber gloves, and a thermos of coffee. The blue-red blossom heads, each supporting dozens of berries are cut from the branches and dropped into the buckets to separate later at the convenience of home.

With rubber gloves on (avoiding determined elderberry stain on our hands) we rolled the berries off of the blossom heads into a large bowl to be crushed in another phase for the treasured jam. Joel and I worked together on this messy part of the task discussing the pleasing artistic form of the elderberry stems after the berries were removed and dreaming of the eventual sweet outcome of this fussing.

Deep into the process, elderberries sneaking past the rubber gloves staining our arms and clothes, porch and shoes, another life surprise cut through our concentrated senses. Jessie, who was just four at the time, was in the house with her sister and brother when she had an epiphany that demanded an answer. She swung the porch door open and forcefully called to Joel, “Dad! Where did all the unicorns go?”  blink      blink

Some questions just have no answers . . . yet.

Thank you for checking on this blog, the continuation of stories left out of A Homestead Decade How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle, $2.99.  We hope you keep checking back because there is a lot more to come.

Helene