I am sure my mother dragged me off to the wild saskatoon berry patch long before I was off the bottle, and she probably put me down on an anthill by mistake, because my earliest recollection of berry picking is being eaten alive by bugs.
Along with the hot humid atmosphere of the bush were the cuts and scratches from thorns and barbed-wire fences. To add to the physical torture, as I grew older, there was the anguish of figuring out how I could escape mad bulls that might take exception to trespassers.
Just the thought of three shriveled berries rattling around in a pail nearly gave me a nervous breakdown.
My mother was devastated. She was raising a daughter who kept turning her back on the rich cultural heritage of wild berry picking. Had it not been for my sister continuing the legacy, there might never have been another saskatoon pie in the family.
My sister had an inner compulsion to compensate for my indifference. She could smell out a berry patch long after the blossoms had disappeared and by keeping constant vigil she knew exactly when to head for the bush with her pails.
The problem was that she never knew when to leave.
Listening to her stories about how big the berries were and how they grew in great purple clusters that she could just strip into the pail, I tried to drum up some enthusiasm for picking. I really did. I tried to imagine that Garden of Eden she described, where there were no mosquitoes or poison ivy or irate bulls.
Then my sister moved away, and absence made the heart grow fonder, especially for saskatoon pie. I finally phoned my sister on the East Coast. She told me where the berry patch was, and friend-hubby and I set out in search of paradise.
We found it, too. The saskatoons hung in such great purple bunches along the road allowance that I had my pail full before the anti-picking pain set in. We went back the next day, and the next.
The bags of berries in the freezer usurped more and more space.
Based on experience there was just one problem — I hated baking pies.
Had the first pie crust I ever made been larger, friend-hubby could have used it for moccasins. By way of encouragement, he kept telling me my pie crusts were improving but I suspected it was only because he didn’t have to chew the leather quite so long. I had started off on the wrong foot and I could never quite forget it, nor would other people let me.
Remember that ad on TV where the crust on a cherry pie flaked apart in slow motion at just the touch of a fork? It was such a far cry from my own pie crust, the family gazed at it in amazement.
To let them tell it, they had to rock the edge of their forks through my leatherwork until it cracked apart — sometimes the pie crust, sometimes the fork handle. Either that, or a teenage son would make a great display of positioning his fork like a sculptor’s chisel and banging it with his fist.
My confidence in the pie crust department dropped to an all-time low, so low I stopped trying altogether. Occasionally, my son grumbled that we never had pie. One day I reminded the complainant that his disparaging remarks had served to cut his own throat.
“Yeah, that sure was a jagged piece of pie crust,” he retorted with a wry grin.
But then came that summer when there was a bumper crop of saskatoons. I dug into my recipe files and asked advice from every pastry cook I knew.
For a while, my kitchen looked like a test lab, each new influx of berries creating another wave of experiments. Trial and error finally led me in the right direction. Having discovered the secrets of tender pastry, I began churning out pies on a veritable assembly line.
As official taster, friend-hubby had to wear off the excess calories toting pies down to the freezer.
When the wind whistled chill but a hot saskatoon pie bubbled in the oven, I savored the sweet smell of success.
As someone has said, “It’s always too soon to quit.”
