Freshly Picked

There's nothing sweeter than a summer day spent gathering raspberries with a loved one.

- KAREN GIEBEL

Have you ever experienced a sudden flood of memories out of the blue? That happened to me recently. I was walking along a dirt road near my house when I spotted some plump blackberries growing wild by a fence.

When I saw them, I was struck by a memory of my dad and the summers I spent picking black raspberries with him on our family farm.

Black raspberries ripen in July in New York state. When I was a kid, my dad expected me to spend part of my summer vacation picking them. Any farmer will tell you that they need to be picked before the sun starts to dry them out. Did I love being hustled out of bed so early in the morning? No. But I loved the sweetness of those shiny black gems. And I loved knowing that when I returned after a morning spent searching for berries, my mom would be waiting for me in the kitchen, ready to make batch after batch of jam. To this day, her jam is still my favorite fruit spread. I'd slather it, fresh from the stove, on homemade bread. No snack was better.

Karen Giebel grew up on a farm in New York, where her parents grew their own vegetables and berries.

For lunch she'd serve us bowls of black raspberries drenched in canned milk and sugar-another treat that I always looked forward to. And when we brought her more berries than she could use right away, she'd freeze the leftovers in quart containers so that they'd be ready for winter pies.