The Minnesota Farm Woman

When I think back on those long and seemingly endless summer days of my growing up years, I think about blueberries. Blueberries were Dad’s favorite fruit and we ate them throughout the year in one way or another. Family and friends would pile into the car several times a week to go picking in the woods, and it was fun, or so they told me. I would begrudgingly pick a cup or two, for which I would be paid anywhere from ten cents to a quarter, depending on the size of the cup, then head on over to the car to read about the latest adventures of Cherry Ames, Student Nurse. My father, who for some reason did not believe in paying money for the good grades on my report card, thought that bribing me would make a berry picker out of me. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, but that, along with digging money out of the car seats while everyone else was picking berries, gave me money to buy Pixie Stix or wax lips at Kozy Korner. Dad, who loved berry picking plus had the lucky but unfortunately non-genetic advantage of being immune to mosquito bites, would go to the woods every day. Because of that, we ate like kings: Blueberry pie, blueberry muffins, blueberry coffee cake plus pints of the little jewels that Mom canned into sauce, which she would thicken and pour over pancakes on cold winter mornings. From the first of July until sometime in August, there was always a large plastic bucket of blueberries in the refrigerator, right next to a wide-mouthed gallon glass jar of milk. In those days, we would get our milk fresh from the Juntunen farm. By morning, the cream would have risen to the top of the jar. We were supposed to stir the milk before we drank it, but on those wonderful summer mornings after sleeping as late as we wanted, my sister and I would fill a cereal bowl full of blueberries, ladle on a couple of scoops of thick yellow cream, then sprinkle on a large spoonful of sugar. There is absolutely, positively nothing else in the world that tastes better. Of course, that was in the days before some know-it-all invented cholesterol and someone else decided that cream and sugar were on the naughty list. Years later, while we were all gathered around the table during a summer visit home and a trip to the berry patch, my dad served us a small bowl of wild blueberries for dessert. With a twinkle in his eye, he set out a carton of skim milk and a carton of cream, along with the sugar bowl. “You choose, ” he said as he passed out the bowls. You can probably guess which I chose, naughty girl that I am. It wasn’t quite the same without the Juntunen’s cream, but I’ll have to admit it was pretty good. I hear that there is a bumper crop of wild blueberries this year, due to all the rain we`ve had in the north woods. I still don’t like to pick berries, but I sure do like to eat them, so perhaps I will go out at least once. Pass the cream and sugar, please.