HI!HO!RASPBERRIO! Its May and 2010 and we are so happy. Very wet today and this rain and cooler weather is great for the raspberries.  Our strawberries are not as happy in the rain and tend to go fungal. However, they have been heavily bearing for a week and our freezer has been getting packed with yummy organic strawberries from our garden.  We are growing three kinds...Sparkle(my current favorite), Allstar, and one big beauty from a friend's patch that we dont know the name.  Sparkle comes earliest and is sweet and has the least amount of slug damage and rot issues so far.

2010 looks like the year of the BEST BERRIES.  Cherry trees are heavy with reddening fruit, mulberry tree is covered with dangling green thangs just starting to turn purple, strawberries are raging into ripe sweetness, blueberries are flowering with lots of heavy fruit set, and Raspberries are well on their way  from flowers to green fruit just starting to set.  Fire blight is on the asian pears but oh well there are only so many hours in the day and we havent gotten to cut the black twigs off yet and its spreads like FIRE.

Speaking of fire...the fireflies off Qualla Road are so exquisite its worth a stop if you are in the neighborhood and its nighttime. I am so grateful we don't have any big ole lights shining everywhere and diminishing the contrast of sparkles to darkness.  Fireflies are a southern tradition in my family where we used to catch them and put them in jars and sell them to scientists in Oak Ridge.  I loved catching them but did not like putting them in the freezer even though it did make us some pennies.  Firefly forgiveness...they keep on blinking and winking and what a show this week! Glad to see so many of those special beetles carrying on their mating rituals.

So, what about raspberry picking this year?! This year we are not committing to regular hours but will send out email alerts when berries are ripe.  Think flexible, easygoing, and abundance for all in June. We hope you are able to come when they and we are ready, with plenty ripe for the picking.  If we see there are berries ready, depending on our estimate of supply, we will announce this fact via email.  The days and times will be everchanging so pay attention starting the second week of June until fourth of July.   We are going to have raspberry plants for sale and you can learn to grow your own if you have the location and time to fuss with fruit.  Raspberries are easy in so many ways if they are happy in the environment.  You can grow some in pots as I have discovered at the side of my house and add flowers around the edges of the pot for color. They are not easy like dandelions, which we also love and have learned to eat for health and happy livers.   

We will also figure something out for sharing mulberries, sour cherries, and blueberries and keep you posted when there are more than we can handle. 

Happy Spring into Summer,

Karen and John