Strawberries, mulberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries in that order. Perhaps next year or the year after will include some gooseberries, currants and cranberries from the plants purchased this year. Actually we may get a couple of currants this year. I mean to remove all of the blossoms from the new plants but by the time I noticed the one I missed it had small berries so I left it on.

The strawberries are just about wrapping up. We had a pretty good haul this year. I haven’t done the math yet but I know we didn’t have the loss due to the wet weather that we had last year. Most were frozen for later but we had a lot of fresh eating. As the strawberries go the blueberries are starting to ripen. The blackberries will be next in line.

The mulberries in the two wild mulberry trees have been ripening over the last couple of weeks. I think this has helped keep the birds out of the strawberry patch. As soon as the mulberries started coming on I noticed that the bird damage to the strawberries stopped. I don’t mind sharing but they seem to like to take a couple of bites out of one then move on to another.

I’ve picked 4 cups of ripe mulberries and have my eye on a Spiced Mulberry Jam recipe. Sounds simple enough and only make 3 jars so if we are not crazy about it we won’t have 15 jars sitting around gathering dust. We’ve had mulberries every year here and for about 10 years at mom’s and I never took the time to gather them. The tree at mom’s was so big you really couldn’t reach the berries. The trees we have here are small and I keep cutting the one back so it is only about 12′ high but loaded. I have tasted them off the tree and they are ok but nothing to rave about. I’ve heard they make a good jam so…

I noticed one raspberry vine actually has a couple of blossoms and small berries.