As a reminder, most of my childhood and teenage life I lived with my blended family on four different farms. We were sharecroppers. As shared in my last blog, there were some happy times. The second most happy time for me was when the family gathered to pick wild fruits and gather wild nuts on the lands around us. The night before the venture, everyone selected a tin or galvanized gallon pail to gather fruit. There were always a larger pail to dump into if yours got full. Everyone wore long pants or stocking and added turpentine oil around their ankles to keep ticks from crawling onto their body. It never worked that well.

Basically we looked for huckleberries, blackberries and plums to gather for canning, a source of food for the winter months. But, we would also gather wild grapes, muscadines and persimmons when founded. Nuts gathered were hickory, walnuts and pecans. All were gathered in their seasons.

Huckleberry bushes were located on slopes and hills mainly in the forest. Blackberries bushes, and plum trees/bushes were found along river banks, side of gravel roads, abandoned homesteads and berms built in open fields. Hickory nut trees were founded among oak trees on slopes and valleys. Walnut and pecan trees were usually located near old abandoned homesteads.

It was a lot of fun for us young children running though the woods to find the next fruit bush or nut tree. It was challenging trying to outperform my brothers and sisters. We probably ate as many as we put in our pails. I remember this as one of the few times, at least three times per year, we spent together in a group free to wonder about and think about nothing except what we were doing at that very moment.

Overcomer by Hope, confident expectation of something good to happen