Grandma's Backyard Berries: Year Two

Grandma's Backyard Berries: 

Year Two

July 12, 2014 was the 2nd time I've sold berries at the West Allis Farmers Market.  More lessons learned.   My primary goal is to promote the currant, even though I did include whatever raspberries and black raspberries were ripe.

Winter 2013 - 2014 was long and very cold beyond the normal recent years.  The Winter was much like those of my mid 20s.  I kept my thoughts to myself when those who think they are living in Tennessee were complaining.  Wisconsin is cold and snowy in Winter.  It made sense to believe the berries would be late because Spring was late, cold and wet and Summer arrived 2 weeks ago.  

Silly me.  The currants were about a week earlier than last years.  The black raspberries were right on schedule.  The red raspberries were affected by the late Spring and are about 2 weeks later than usual.  I was completely unprepared for the farmers market when I noticed the currants were fully ripe.  My berry picking husband was in Michigan cleaning out Aunt Mary's porch so she can use it and enjoying the various events of the Bass Festival in Crystal Falls.  I was on my own this year.

I began picking berries after work on Thursday.  3 hours of picking each night before the street lights came on and the mosquitoes got nasty.  My traditional method of picking currants has been to strip the berry off the stem.  They are washed, then measured into zipper freezer bags to freeze for later use.  It is an efficient and a quick way to go from bush to storage.  Lesson learned last year is currants off the stem will 'leak' their juices if not frozen soon after picking, resulting in very soggy pulp boxes.  This year I had to use a new method of berry picking by picking the stem with the berries attached.  This slowed down my time because the berries naturally want to come off the stem and the stem does not always want to release from the branch.

Currants drop off the stems every time they are handled if care is not taken.  The entwined vine of the wild morning glory just made this more obvious every time I pulled this invasive weed from the bush.  Pick, wash and store was not going to work for the market if I wanted any berries left to sell on the stems.  The new method was to hose off the bush, let it dry, pick the currants into a container and store in the fridge. 

This brings about a side topic: storage containers.  Occasionally currants would be stored in large mixing bowls when there was not time to rinse, bag and freeze.  To market berries I needed somewhere to hold quantities.  Sterite (sp) makes a rectangular plastic container with handles that fold up to hold the lid in place.  They are just large enough to hold a 9 X 13 pan.  The containers fit on a refrigerator shelf and stacked 5 high without crushing the bottom container.  The capacity on the label is 6.1 quarts and it did hold 6 quarts of water without spillage when I checked.  

The bottom was lined with a paper towel and the berries went from bush to container.  I filled them loosely with ~ 5 quarts of berries so no chance of crushing would occur.  They also nest to keep storage to a minimum.  At a one time purchase of ~ $4.50 each, it was a bargain.  

Saturday morning I picked another 3 quarts total of raspberries and black raspberries along with 5 quarts of champagne currants.  The car was packed up and I was on my way a little after noon for the 1:00 opening bell at the farmers market.

The sublet booth is on the perimeter of the market and I was able to find a parking space just across the street from there.  The 5' folding table was set up.  [It is a 20 year old pressed wood that gets heavier every time I carry it and see the light weight plastic tables now being used.  Then I am glad it has some mass to it when the wind picks up.]  The two boxes of storage containers filled with berries and the cooler were brought from the car.  I began filling the berry boxes and setting them onto the table.  

The West Allis Farmers Market does not allow sales until a bell rings at 1:00.  Before that time there are people who walk through the aisles looking at what is for sale.  This is a social time and pleasantries along with questions and answers are exchanged.  5 minutes before 1:00 a group formed at my booth: hovering.  Berries are uncommon and locally grown black raspberries were most desirable yesterday.  More so because I do not use sprays in my yard.

The bell went off and three boxes of black raspberries were sold in less than a minute.  Then the rest was a blur for a couple of hours.  It was explained to me later, it is OK for a customer to ask to have something set aside until after the bell rings, much like a special order.  Although, the hovering was quite exciting.

My husband showed up around 2:30 to keep me company.  He watched the golden gloves fights at Nylunds and played bingo in Crystal Falls on Friday and headed home on Saturday morning.

 At 4:30 there were very few shoppers in the market so all was packed up and we went home.  There were 9 pints of currants on stems left.  I washed them, took them off the stem, bagged and froze them at home.  The result was 3 quarts of berries.  Extrapolated out that means 9 pints currants on stems = 6 pints currants off the stems.  Or 3 pints currants on the stems = 2 pints currants off the stems.  This is good to know.

I was not prepared for this currant season coming during the same time it came last year.  Lesson learned.  Next year I will also have replaced my unreliable oven for one that holds it's temperature.  The plan is to make up some pastries like those sold by the bakeries at the farmers markets using my currants for fillings.  I can hand out the samples to the bakeries with recipes the week before I take my berries to market.  There was no time to accomplish that this year.

The original currant patch is also too big and needs to be thinned out.  The thinned out bushes will be transplanted into a row along the driveway.  That cement heat sink is always a good thing to moderate the root temperature.

It was not possible to weed the current currant bush from underneath because it is so overgrown.  The only way to get rid of the wild morning glory vines is to physically pull them out by their roots every time they sprout.  When I pulled them from the top of the bush and followed the vine down to it's source too many currant berries fell from their stems.

My eventual goal to to establish customers by the time we retire.  An email can go out when the currants are ready and then we can overnight ship the currants to their plants.  First I need to educate people that currants can hold their own with the berries sold in the grocery stores. 


Let's here it for currants!!

Nannette