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Drupelet Berries
Raspberries, Blackberries + Mulberries
Appears in
By Abra Berens
Published 2023
About a year ago, during the first week of August, I was commiserating with a farming friend, lamenting the ensuing frenetic pace that always peaks with the end of summer. I was bracing, as I always am that time of year, for the waves of visitors to our beach town, the urgency to wring the last bit of summer vacation from the days that are noticeably shortening, and the demands to be endured by those of us in the service industry. I ended my moaning with a simple declaration, “I hate August.”
He responded, “Yeah, but at least it isn’t July.” For him, July is the bear because the days are so long and filled from sunup to sundown not only with harvesting, washing, packing, and selling, but also with planting, weeding, and starting seeds for fall crops, the start of the last crops running in tandem with the peak of the first. The two ends of the spectrum merge together like A Wrinkle in Time, and all that there is is more work that needs to be done.