Far be it from me to criticise the Management’s grasp of logistics but REALLY…! As I have understood it there are some elementary rules that should be followed: for example if you want the traffic to move smoothly you don’t start all the vehicles at the same time, and, similarly, if you want to have three successful meetings in one meeting room during a day you have them after each other, not simultaneously.
It doesn’t seem to work that way with our wild harvest this year. We had the first glimpse of the situation almost two weeks ago when we visited a bog to see whether there would be any cloudberries to pick at some later date. There were quite a few already – and as a ripe cloudberry is almost like an omelette in being just a passing moment at its best we picked the berries – fortunately we had a small bucket with us. On the way home we had a look at a wild strawberry site that had had no berries at the proper time (just after Midsummer). Now quite a few were ripe and we picked them as we had a second small bucket with us. So far so good but nearby was a usually early (before Midsummer) chanterelle site that had had no mushrooms at that time; now there were quite a few so we – well, we DIDN’T have a third bucket and had to gather them in my scarf – leaving my unprotected head prey for the twin-lobed deerflies.
By and large the situation remains like that – the only changes have been that a) a week ago the ceps made an unusually early mass appearance, and b) the raspberries are ripening fast.
Mind you, by no means am I complaining of the harvest per se; we are very happy there are things to harvest – but some kind of successive order in ripening would be very welcome. We are only two and there are four different things to gather at exactly the same period and with the same frequency, i.e. every day (no, I didn’t make a mistake in counting; the chanterelles have to wait as they are not so short-lived as the others).
Maybe it would be possible to visit several sites in a day? Let’s see, you dash in the morning to the bog; and the summer bog is lovely with its moorland clouded yellows,
its sundews
– and its cloudberries….
… but after picking that lot on a hot day – and the days have been hot – you just want to go home, eat something, clean the berries and store them (well, you don’t actually want to do this but you have to), take a painkiller for your back and crawl to bed.
Next morning you have to decide again where to go. If it happens during the week it’s really a problem but if you have luck, it’s weekend and the decision is easy: to the ceps because all the world and his wife will be driving along even the most obscure forest roads looking for cloudberries and it’s somehow depressing to queue for a parking place on a usually empty road in the middle of nowhere. And, anyway, we all know what a-day-too-old cep looks like and we want to avoid that sight. – But all the day you yearn for the bog…
Admittedly, ceps are quicker to gather than cloudberries but if you clean them on the spot as is advisable they still take their time
The strawberries? I’d love to pick them as for me they spell “summer” both when picking them and during the winter – but up to now there has been spare energy for just an occasional dessert…
Unfortunately, I’m not the only one keen on even strawberries: last time I surprised a brood of hazel hens feasting at my best site.
And the raspberries? We need a lot of them so need to adjust the timetable again. Maybe just one last visit to the bog and after that it will be raspberry thorns everywhere.
Having got all this off my chest I have to admit that the Management has arranged a few pleasant surprises, too: our cotton is flowering
and one evening at sunset…
Northbynorth 