10 Life Lessons from the Blackberry Patch

I’m back in the black­berry patch for my annual woodsy oppor­tu­nity to pick and fill my freezer for the year with lucious black­ber­ries. Real antioxidant-rich suc­cu­lent berries found in nature — not the techno gad­get you hold in your hand. http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20040617/antioxidants-found-unexpected-foods   And late sum­mer is the best time to har­vest this organic delight found in the woods.  It is my ZEN thing to do in the sum­mer as it takes me away from the usual city stuff and allows me to become re-connected to whom I am.  And since I am also a Life/Wellness Coach I see the appli­ca­tion of my expe­ri­ence to those of you who might like to do some soul search­ing as well.

Here are my thoughts on the expe­ri­ence of pick­ing in the patch  and you can decide how they apply to your life.

B – Be pre­pared before you enter the patch.

Shorts and tank tops are not pick­ing attire.  Black­ber­ries grow on long prickly vines that not only scratch you eas­ily, but can wrap around your ankles and trip you if you start mov­ing too fast.  Pre­pare and pro­tect your­self with long sleeve  shirts and pants, prefer­ably denim,  socks and shoes, no san­dals, and a hat.  Some­times those vines grow so tall that they can even catch hold of your hair and hang on tight.  Being pre­pared helps reduce the poten­tial of painful scratches and glid­ing through the patch slowly reduces the pos­si­bil­ity of los­ing your foot­ing and falling into the vine maze and hurt­ing your­self further.

L– Lis­ten to the sounds of the woods for guidance. 

Be alert to what you hear.  If birds are chirp­ing pleas­antly, bugs are buzzing around mak­ing a lazy sound, leaves are flut­ter­ing in the breeze and you feel calm, then all is well.  At a moment’s notice, how­ever, you might hear a screech or a squawk or a fast rustling thru the woods and you will know that some­thing is up!  Stay alert and be ready to respond if you need to.  It’s all about lis­ten­ing and mak­ing deci­sions based on what you hear.  It’s amaz­ing when you don’t have the dis­trac­tion of all the “peo­ple noise”  that the sounds of nature are there to guide your sur­vival  in very basic ways.

A –  Ana­lyze your next move before you take the first step.

Before start­ing to pick, scan the entire patch and get the big pic­ture of how you will pro­ceed.  Where is the best entry point that pro­vides the eas­i­est access, has the least amount of entan­gl­ments  and yields the biggest return. This is a “prickly” ven­ture and can lead to a lot of scratches, so be strate­gic  and move care­fully as you proceed.

C – Check behind you often.

No, I don’t mean you should be para­noid about pick­ing.  Some­times when you keep mov­ing for­ward as you pick you only see one side of what is avail­able.  Turn around peri­od­i­cally and you will see more berries that you might have missed if you are always going for­ward.  I like the “turn­ing tech­nique”.  Plant your feet in one spot and pick in all direc­tions before you move on.  Very effi­cient and you see all the angles.

K – Keep mov­ing deeper into the patch.

The best is yet to come.  The first glance does not reveal the true bounty that lies within.  As you go deeper you start devel­op­ing the “eye” for what you are look­ing for and you start see­ing more of what is there than you orig­i­nally thought.  And berries always appear smaller from a dis­tance, so when you get up close and per­sonal,   you really can see how big and beau­ti­ful they really are.  Of course mov­ing deeper into the patch means more vines, more stick­ers, more scratches, but no pain – no gain.  It is well worth it to forge ahead.

B – Berries that fall to the ground before you get to them are a gift.

Two things are hap­pen­ing here. If you get overly greedy and try to pick too many berries at once with your hand, there might be over­flow and they might fall out of your hand and onto the ground.  The pos­i­tive spin on this is that there might be a crit­ter on the ground that had a won­der­ful berry drop from the heav­ens right down to the ground in front of it – and it per­ceives it as a gift!  So instead of get­ting frus­trated when you lose the per­fect berry, think of the joy that crit­ter feels when it appeared.

E – Expect to expe­ri­ence some pain

I never make it out of the patch with­out a few scratches, mainly on my hands with exposed skin,   but if I pick slowly and steadily and avoid quick moves, I keep it to a min­i­mum.  There will be times when you are tempted by a beau­ti­ful clus­ter of ripe berries to reach far­ther than you should, and then it is easy to get off bal­ance and fall, or pull a mus­cle.  Again, slow delib­er­ate and cal­cu­lated move­ments reduce the pos­si­bil­ity of pain and suffering.

R – Rejoice over the experience.

Appre­ci­ate the bounty you are har­vest­ing, how nature pro­vides such deli­cious and nour­ish­ing treats, that you have taken the time to be  with nature, be with your­self and be “one with the berries”.  The best stress man­age­ment tool there is for ground­ing and it’s all FREE.

R -  Ripe berries have the best fla­vor and are eas­i­est to pick.

The biggest berries are the ripest and sweet­est, and are the eas­i­est to pick.  When you hit on a clus­ter of them all ripe and ready, you can cup your hand around the whole bun­dle and they slide eas­ily off the vine and into your hand.  Very smooth!  Most of the time the biggest and ripest  are found in the shade or hid­den among leaves, so when you find them they are a com­plete sur­prise.  I always get excited when I find them – and usu­ally shout out to my pick­ing part­ners – “I’ve found the mother  load!” So always keep your eyes open when pick­ing because the best berries might not be in full view, they might even be very low under a lot of brush  and you might have to look a lit­tle harder to find them.

Y – Young berries need more time to mature

Just because a berry looks ripe doesn’t mean it is.  You’ll know right away if it is ready to be picked because if it hangs on tight to the vine and you can’t eas­ily guide it off, it’s not ready.  A gen­tle tug will tell you if it is time or not.  If you start pulling too hard you could mash it and then it is of no value to anyone.

So if you want to coach your­self today,  ask your­self – How does this apply to your life?

Be well on YOUR well­ness journey.

Carol Ebert

carol@creatingwellnesscultures.com

www.creatingwellnesscultures.com

www.carolebert.usana.com

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