I (
and the family) have been spending a significant amount of time this year foraging for things to eat in mother nature - Maple Syrup, black raspberries, mulberries, asparagus, mushrooms and most recently blackberries. Luckily I have found a friend as a result of my foraging requests, that has allowed me to ramble around on his property looking for mother nature's edibles.
Last week however, I received a message from my friend telling me that he thought he saw me on the property the day before. The thing was, he didn't see me pull up or even see where I parked my car, so he pulled out his spyglass to check it out and saw a woman with long-hair instead.
He thought that was odd, so he got on his tractor and rode out there to see what was up. Apparently the woman parked in the nearby cemetary and walked across another piece of private property to get to his blackberries. She said "Oh is this your place?" and "Where do you live?" (
You can SEE the house from the back of his field, and you could plainly see where he came from on the tractor, so she must have been playing dumb.)
What I found very odd was that, there is in NO WAY that she could have SEEN the berries, or even followed the berry patch across the other property, as there were NO berry plants back there. In other words she must have previously KNOWN about the patch and trespassed into his property to get to it! Ordinarily I wouldn't say anything, except my friend is nice and told her he supposed it was OK that she was there - since she was ALREADY there picking. (
He's much too nice in my opinion, i would have said to get lost - He didn't want the berries to go to waste though!)
Several days later I was out there picking again when suddenly another car drove back to the patch (
It's at the very back of the property). I mean com'mon, once you get caught, shouldn't you just STOP with the pilfering? The woman pulled up and said "Hi mind if i join you?" I asked if Steve knew (
my "provider") and she said Yes (
which he really didn't "know" she was there that day) so I begrudgingly said, "I guess not."
I mean REALLY, what would you say to that? "Yea, com'mon over and pick where I am picking since you have already trespassed and KNOW that this field was here." Or "My berries are your berries, i'll just pick less today..." My friend even mowed
around the bushes for the kids and I to better pick, which was also evident, so it's not like she couldn't have guessed that SOMEONE was already picking the prepped field!
Now I'm a pretty aggressive person when it comes to sportsmanship - My husband will tell you out-right to stand back because when I get into competitive mode it's a scary thing to see... So image this woman pulling up in her white truck and asking me "Do you mind company?"
I immediately jump into the super-speed mode, mowing around the blackberry plants like some frenzied fool - Pplucking ALL of the ripest, juiciest berries of the bunch and leaving the undesirable shriveled ones... I even plucked some that could have used another day in the sun, I was so competitive!
I'm sure she though "some nut-job", but I didn't like that this woman, who for all purposes DID NOT GET permission BEFORE she started picking, was back for more... That being said, it isn't my property, so I shouldn't feel this sort of entitlement, but I at LEAST had permission to be there!
So what does one do when a competitor moves into the field? Throw a curve-ball, spit-ball or other nastiness? Do you jump into the juiciest berries and leave nothing behind? I'm sure if you were nearby that day you would have hear the giant sucking noise as I went into vacuum mode - I can't believe the number of berries I picked that day. I even came back MUCH more often than I may have otherwise, just to thwart the pilferer.
I'd feel ashamed to admit this I suppose...
A few days ago I was chatting with a good friend about this encounter and mentioned the woman's name. My girlfriend said "Wait what was the name?" I told her again and she sounded rather puzzled. She asked again where my friend Steve lived, then asked about they type of car the woman drove, "Was it a white trailblazer?" "Oh I dunno, it was a white truck!"
My friend told me that her mother-in-law has been known to pick MANY berries, and in fact had a freezer filled with something liek 400 cups - YES 400 CUPS of berries!!! AND that was the general vacinity of where her mother-in-law MAY have been picking. My friend just couldn't understand why the woman introduced herself the way she had. A few days later, she asked her mother-in-law later if she had been "caught" (
Although she is BY FAR much more PC than I!) and after a 30 minute conversation had her Mother-in-law admit that YES it was HER!
So my pilferer, the woman who trespassed and then played dumb, was none other than a very good friends mother-in-law!!! I laughed my butt off... What gets me though is that this woman felt there was nothing wrong with what she did in trespassing onto someone's property. Which brings me back to my original questions:
So what does one do when a competitor moves into the field? When another "forager" shows up what is the proper etticate? I know from shroom hunting that you simply don't walk into the area of the other 'shroom hunter, but in this case we were on PRIVATE PROPERTY! What should I, or could I have said?
Sometimes life just comes full-circle doesn't it?
As I arrived I realized I may be too late, as one of his new neighbors was hacking away at the fence-line at the uncontrolled and overgrown grapevines, mulberry trees and black raspberries. As grandma would say, I was a day late and a dollar short... However as I approached the fence-line I heard "So you must be the maple tree girl, Steve told us about you. He said you may be coming for the grapes." Luckily most of the most prolific vines were still in tact, so i was able to harvest a bunch.
Along with finding mushrooms, I told my children never to pick any, except if Mommy or daddy were right there and said it was OK, and I told them to NEVER EVER eat any. I even said that they could die from eating mushrooms - I would tell ANYONE that. The two types of mushrooms I was hunting though are the easiest to identify and don't have poisonous look-a-likes really, so with my trusty guide-book in hand I felt confident in our harvest. Anything I wasn't certain of I took the "when in doubt throw out" route...
What was truly amazing was the next week while at my son's soccer game, my husband and daughter were roaming around, and my daughter netted a large cache of puff balls that hadn't gotten trampled - they were right in the middle of all the soccer fields!
We had a blast walking through the park looking for wildlife, falling leaves and all there is to see and do (I enjoyed tiring them out too!). I love teaching my children new and exciting things to do, and they enjoy spending the time with dear ole' mom!
My daughter and I (OK mostly me!) spent the morning picking luscious "black berries" this morning - Two buckets worth of the gems! Actually my benefactor Steve (who is allowing me to forage on his property) says they are blackberries. The berries I harvested a few weeks back were apparently black raspberries...
The trouble is, one of the local Ann Arbor foragers in the area mentioned the end of last week that blackberry season is over. The berries I harvested today seem to just be beginning to ripen and will likely produce the majority of their load within the next two weeks - Provided they don't dry up!
typical thorns on the plants and the leaves look much like other types of raspberries - the berries themselves are plucked WITH their stems attached (unlike when a raspberry slides off of the plant leaving a small hole in the berry.). Generally they are clustered on stalks in large bunches, that often cause the laden heavy plant to droop to the ground...
I stopped by my friends house to plant more bean seeds and harvest the last of the summers asparagus. I mentioned wanting to check on the Mulberry trees out back when he said "Oh yea I forgot, they started to ripen just the other day!" Hate to say it but berries wait for no one...
