Parable Of The Wild Fruit

Out in the berry patch, the bluejays scolded me for trespassing.

They talked of a food shortage and threatened terrible things to profiteers

who took more than their share of the necessaries of life.

But I was used to their clamor and not alarmed even when one

swooped down and struck my bonnet.

I knew they would not harm me and kept right on picking berries.

This is a parable. I give it to you for what it is worth, trusting you

to draw your own comparisons.

 Huckleberries

When the Man of the Place and I, with the small daughter, came to

Missouri some years ago, we tried to save all the wild fruit in the woods.

Coming from the plains of Dakota where the only wild fruit was the few

chokecherries growing on the banks of small lakes, we could not bear to see

go to waste the perfectly delicious wild huckleberries, strawberries, and

blackberries which grew so abundantly everywhere on the hills.

By the way, did you ever eat chokecherries?  At first taste they are very

good, and the first time I tried them I ate quite a few before my throat began

to tighten with a fuzzy, choking feeling.  A green persimmon has nothing on 

a ripe chokecherry, as I know. I have tried both.

So when we came to the Ozarks, we reveled in the wild fruit, for as of

yet there was no tame fruit on the place.

Huckleberries came first, and we were impatiently waiting for them

to ripen when somebody told me that the green ones made good pies.

Immediately, I went out into the little cleared space in the woods where

the low huckleberry bushes grew and gathered a bucket of berries.

Company was coming to dinner next day, and I took special pains to

make a good pie of the berries; for I did want my new neighbors

to enjoy the visit. And the crust of the pie was deliciously crisp

and flaky, but after one taste, the visitors seemed to hesitate.

I took a mouthful of my piece and found it bitter as gall.

I never tasted gall, but that is the bitterest expression I know

and nothing could be more bitter than that pie.

"Oh!" I exclaimed. "They told me green huckleberries were good!"

"These can't be huckleberries," said Mrs. X, "for green huckleberries

do make good pies."

Mr. X was examining the berries in his portion.

"These are buckberries," he said. "They grow on a bush about the

size of a huckleberry bush, and you must have made a mistake 

when you gathered them."

And so I added to my knowledge the difference between huckleberries

and buckberries, and we have enjoyed many a green huckleberry pie since then.

Used when quite small, the berries not only taste delicious but give a

bouquet of perfume to the pie that adds wonderfully to the pleasure of eating it.

When blackberries came on, chiggers were ripe also, and there is nothing

a chigger enjoys so much as feasting on a "foreigner".

The blackberry patches are their home, and we made many a chigger

happy that season. We gathered the berries by bucketsful; we filled pans

and pots and all the available dishes in the house, then hastily we bathed in

strong soapsuds and applied remedies to the worse bitten spots.

Then I put up the berries and cleared the decks for the next day's

picking, for gather them we would, no matter how the chigger bit.

I was thinking of these experiences while the bluejays screamed at

me in the berry patch-tame berries now. We never pick the wild ones these

days because there are large tame ones in the plenty.

The apple trees that were little switches when we picked the wild

fruit have supplied us with carloads of apples. 
 Even the chiggers never bother us anymore.

We are so accustomed to an abundance of fruit that we do not

appreciate the fine cultivated sorts as we did the wild kinds that we

gathered at the cost of so much labor and discomfort.

There is a moral here somewhere, too, I am sure, and again

I will leave it for you to discover.

Old-Fashioned Blackberry Pie

"Parable Of Wild Fruit"

(July 1920)

 Laura Ingalls Wilder

(1867-1957)

Prolific American writer

From the book, "Little House In The Ozarks"

A Laura Ingalls Wilder Sampler

The Rediscovered Writings

Edited by Stephen W. Hines

 Guideposts Edition

(1991)