I’ve spent a good deal of the summer thinking about places I could plant new berry bushes, and how to prepare so we’ll have more harvest around the farm in the coming years. In early spring, I cleared some swaths of overgrown pricker bushes and weeds I have been struggling with for a year or so now, along the outside of my chicken fence. 

Growing right through the base of the fence line was a particularly nasty thorny briar that I honestly did not take the time to identify in its bare winter state. Due to   its heavy display of thorns, I was unable to unweave it from the fence as I would have done had I better gloves. 

Thank God! Little did I know, but I had unwittingly taken out a few smaller berry bushes around it, which frankly, had never produced well before anyway. The one I left, however, was so laden with berries this August that it has bent from every limb with large bountiful clusters. 

Now I’ve only lived on this property for a little over two years now, if memory serves. During that time, I’ve actively gone looking for harvestable plants and native things that we use. Either we haven’t had a good berry year for blackberries in a couple years, or I’m oblivious (likely both), but this year I seemed to find pockets of wild raspberries—and now wild blackberries, like I never saw at either of the last two places we’ve lived. 

My wife has been quite busy with work and as a result I’ve been able to do things with our boys, like take care of the yard and animals and just try to be outside during those afternoons. Recently, they brought home a bag of empty containers, given by our babysitter, that caused so much excitement that it could have been bottled. 

Well, with berries on the bush, and newly acquired containers with no preconceived purpose, I had them pick out their favorites, and we went for a berry-picking walk. 

Despite the meandering focus of my eldest, we still managed to discover a strong collection of bushes and clean off most of the ripened berries. My only thought following our adventure was how much we would have to share with the local wildlife.

Not long after, and not far away at all, I began to get a glimpse of an answer. Bears had begun to appear with more frequency on the trail cameras around the farm and even right off our neighbor’s porch, which is only a quarter of a mile from our house. Fortunately, there seems to be a lot of food in the woods right now for the bears and deer and other critters, but seasons change, and when it comes to anything grown outdoors, it’s first come, first served. 

We had a small reminder of this when the birds descended upon our babysitter’s elderberry bushes and cleaned them completely off. With more than a few other things going on with work for myself and my wife, I had no illusions: We could very well lose out on some things this fall. However, with the diligence of my dad, who kept an eye on his elderberry bushes, we were able to get a small handful of those, and have been picking blackberries regularly for as long as the berries continue to ripen.

It had me wondering if bears even bother to wait for ripe berries, or if they simply consume what they find. A question that came from my youngest seemed ever more pressing: Do black bears turn black from eating blackberries?

The way out here we share the food in the woods with our furry neighbors, but while it might be a buffet, it’s a race to see who gets their share first. As for me, I’m wondering if my beard will darken just a little from eating enough berries…