When we were thinking of all the plans we might have for living out in the country, self-sustaining, gardening, etc, one of the givens was we would be growing fruit. And lots of it. Our first year, we ordered and planted over a dozen bare-root fruit trees and most of those did survive the winter. But they are still so small. No fruit set this year. I blame it on the apparent lack of bee activity, but they are young and shouldn’t be fruiting yet anyway.

We also moved strawberries, planted a large amount of raspberries, and about five blueberry bushes. Oh, and the grapes too. So, we were doing pretty well, but not good enough. 

I counted up the remaining space in our existing blueberry row and estimated how many fruit trees it would take to fill our killed-sod solarized spot. Then I gave Anne her dream mission: go and find six or seven blueberry bushes and about seven fruit trees. It didn’t take too long for the plants to be found and now they need planting. Where is the shovel?

There is something awesome and magical about berries. It could be the little packages they typically come in at the store makes them more precious. We would need lots of little packages at this point to preserve that “good things in small packages” adage. And I am not all that into preserving adages. I’m more into eating berries. 

Most ripe right now are the black and red raspberries and mulberries. We planted the red, but the black and mul are just wild on the acreage. Our strawberries are pretty much done. If we are lucky we might see some later in the Summer yet. Still waiting for the blackberries and blueberries. They seem to be coming along nicely, but they are very young plants, so I might not be able to take a picture before eating them all. 

With all this rain I feel a calling to build an ark and grow a long beard. I can probably build it inside the barn so as not to appear like some kind of crazy person. But instead of filling the ark with animals, we will load it with flowers and veggies. Not sure if we can fit them all though. But there will certainly be room for strawberries! Fresh berries are just so good. Especially after a hard rain… or forty days of hard rain.

We don’t really have a patch of strawberries yet – just a couple of plants here and there. They are growing vigorously this year. I have my eye on a little patch of garden that might become a more permanent berry area. Or maybe we should let them loose in the barnyard. A barnyard of berries. Yum!

They are tiny cute at this stage. Most of the vines are doing well in their blue tube shelters. A couple have stretched their way to the top, but several show signs of miniature fruit. Amazing. It will be difficult if not impossible to snip off these little clusters. This first year root development is more crucial and fruit should not be encouraged. But I think we will end up with a couple of fruits, just to make sure they taste okay.