U-Pick Secrets
For Starters, This Needs a Better Name
We had our first U-Pick. I can now admit I was a bit scared going in. For starters, the word “pick” has a lot of negative connotations. It’s bad to pick your nose or pick a scab. No one likes a picky eater, and we must be vigilant against pickpockets. But I had to stick with “U-Pick” because “You-Harvest-Your-Own-Crop” would not fit on the sign.
My main fear was that no one would show up. Our current in-season crop, aronia, is not one of the classic U-Pick favorites, like strawberries or apples. But aronia has one massive advantage: no bending! Strawberries are a hands-and-knees crop; my joints hurt just thinking about it. Plus, you never know how many nests of pink baby mice are hidden in the straw. Apples often require ladders (also known as leg-breakers). No one over 50 should ever climb a ladder, unless it’s a fire escape during a 5-alarm fire — and the firemen don’t have one of those trampoline things to jump onto. (I’m not sure if any fire department actually has those, maybe that’s just something I’ve seen on cartoons).
But aronia is all at eye level and easy to pick.
That said, Aronia has one drawback. It will turn your hands purple. The berry juice is a dye that will make your friends think you’re auditioning to be a hand model in the new James Cameron Avatar movie (in case you have not seen Avatar, it’s about blue people. It’s a bigger budget version of The Smurfs.)
I solved the blue-hands problem by giving rubber gloves to the pickers. So the field full of surgical-gloved pickers looked like a team-building exercise for the American Medical Association.
Even odder was that most of the people who were picking had never even tasted aronia previously, because stores don’t carry it. That’s weird because my local supermarket has plenty of bizarre fruits from overseas (jackfruit?!) but not aronia, even though aronia can be found growing in those islands in the supermarket parking lot (not kidding!)
I gave everyone a sample of aronia jam, which is delicious. That said, off the vine, aronia is not delicious. But that shouldn’t be a deterrent. Everyone likes coffee, but no one chews coffee beans right off the bush. Onions are great, but we don’t pluck them out of the ground and start gnawing on them. (If you do this, stop.)
Some things — most things — are best as an ingredient.
But the main thing I learned at my U-Pick is that the crop is, well, secondary. People want to get out and enjoy nature. I do too. So we’ll do more U-Picks… or maybe U-Harvests.
