The Pleasures and Dangers of Berry-Picking Season
June 29th, 2006,Summer continues to offer up its bounty, and now it provides wild black raspberries. My wife discovered a few patches of these black and purple gems near our house here in southern Minnesota. Two evenings ago we took our daughter along and did some picking.
The raspberries tasted wonderful. I found that crushing them against the roof of my mouth with my tongue and holding them there was the best way to eat them; it made them seem sweeter.
Many pleasures in life present dangers as well, and when picking wild berries those dangers are bugs and noxious plants such as poison ivy. When picking wild berries in years past I neglected to be careful of poison ivy, and at least twice I suffered from painful rashes. I’m hypersensitive to poison ivy, so to avoid it I don’t stray into the undergrowth and I dress in long pants and sleeves. Some tight-fitting gloves, like surgical gloves, might be a good idea too.
When I get home, just to be safe, I rub down exposed skin with a product called Tecnu, which is supposed to remove the oil left on skin by poison ivy. I follow that by washing with water and soap.
Don’t forget to put on a good bug spray before you go out picking wild berries, and when you get home check for ticks. My mother recently was bitten by a deer tick when staying at the family cabin in northwestern Wisconsin. Some days later she came down with a tick-borne illness called ehrlichiosis - human granulocytic ehrlichiosis, more specifically, or HGE - a bacterial disease that is something like Lyme disease and can be very serious. A National Institutes of Health document about the disease states that HGE has “the same distribution in the United States as Lyme disease, mainly the Northeast and upper Midwest.”
Great, another problem for our region, along with tornadoes and blizzards. Well, I’ll accept the risks. Now I look forward to the wild blueberries and blackberries that are still to come.