The older two kids and I had been working hard to erect a new fence line between our property and the neighbor directly to the south of us. The summer heat combined with weeks of drought made for a difficult, nearly debilitating afternoon. Yet, we trudged on.
Then I heard a the unmistakable sound of excitement. “Cool! Blackberries!”, yelled one of my kids and they both immediately waded into the thicket of brambles, picking the vine-ripened fruits and gobbling them up as quickly as they could.
After a short while, they asked if they could have a break from fencing to gather blackberries for a dessert. How could I refuse. I love blackberry cobbler.
Within the next 1/2 hour, they had enough for a pie.
Laura found a good recipe online and worked with one of my daughters to make the dessert. The next night we enjoyed the fruits of our land. It was delicious.
The recipe that Laura found was from AllRecipes.com. It was simple and easy to make, yet it tasted wonderful.
The Benefits of Harvesting Food
This experience underscores our chosen way of life. We firmly believe that we are called to homesteading, to growing and harvesting as much of our own food as we can.
The simple joy of finding of makings for a meal while working in the field, of turning the hand picked fruit into a delicious, healthful dessert is a relatively rare treat in today’s society.
The scratches of the thorns on our hands and forearms only served to heighten the sweetness of the dessert the next evening.
Apart from the love of doing what we do, there are other benefits to our homesteading lifestyle:
- Our kids are becoming resourceful and don’t shirk away from hard work. They knew the thorns that awaited them, yet they chose to walk among them to gather the fruit. The berries were worth the effort.
- The more we harvest from nature’s bounty, the more we can save. The money that would have gone to pie filling can now be redirected to something else.
- Our kids are learning not to see weeds, but to see provisions. The thick brambles were not an eyesore, they were an invitation to yumminess.
- We’ve discovered a new area on our property that can serve as a food source during certain times of the year if times get really tough.
- We’ve discovered an area of our property that animals find attractive as a food source during certain times of the year. We can look to harvesting those animals as well.
Foraging for your own food is a rewarding. It provides an immediate sense of accomplishment as well as filling your stomach.
Do you harvest your own food?
PreppingToSurvive.com 
July 8, 2012 at 12:44 pm
This article reminds me of many such experiences in my childhood. We would often break from our daily chores or construction projects on our parents’ property to pick raspberries or blueberries that Mom would later make into delicious cobblers or pies. We also picked rhubarb (which is ready for harvest about now in our area) and she would make the most delicious pies for us.
We had a lot of responsibilities as children but we learned self esteem and self confidence from mastering simple every day survival tasks. I wish that more of our country’s children would be taught the simple lessons of how to survive by responsibly hunting and gathering nature’s bounty.
July 16, 2012 at 9:16 am
Couldn’t agree more, Sherron. Thanks!
Joe
August 1, 2012 at 9:36 am
Although nothing grows like that in our garden, it is our intention to add black, blue and rasp berry (we already have strawberry)…just the jam alone makes it worth it! Thanks for your article.
August 2, 2012 at 1:35 pm
If you’re going plant some berries, you may want to consider the thornless variety. Your forearms will thank you for it.