I blame the puppies for brain failure.

Madison.

Emily and I went raspberry-picking on Sunday, and I pretty much determined that I'll leave my head behind if someone's not there to point it out to me.

With our spouses gone for the weekend, we decided to get together and head down to Blue Skies Farm for some fresh, organic raspberries. This being Labor Day weekend, Paul and Louise recommended that all pickers go early - they open at 8:30 am - because the combination of time off and peak raspberry season means the plants'll be picked clean by noon, if not earlier. We arrived about 8:45, before anyone else, and couldn't find anyone about, so we just started picking.

Actually, we first started playing with the puppies. Six-week-old puppies and their friendly, but exhausted, mother. It turns out that Paul and Louise were off fetching puppy food - they're in the process of shifting them to solid food - and the dogs were thrilled to jump all over us, nipping and wrestling and trying to eat my shoelaces. They couldn't seem to hold still, though they didn't mind being picked up at all. If they weren't all spoken for, I'd've been sorely tempted to bring one home.¹

The farm itself is both lovely and tiny. At a mere 2-1/2 acres, I'm sure it's smaller than some of the larger private lots around Madison, but far more wonderful. Since we were unsure of wandering into the berry patch at first, we peeked around the hoophouses and barn first, just to see if anyone was around. Emily noted, with relief, that their tomato plants are just as rambunctious and wild as hers are by this time of year. Mine, too. From there, we walked through the herb garden, intensely perfumed with basil and fennel, stopped to visit the puppies, and set out into the raspberry patch.

Of the three types of raspberries they grow - red, orange and yellow - the red are the first to ripen, and the easiest to pick because their ripeness is so visually apparent. The orange ones aren't so bad, though they're the smallest of the three sizes, and thus take the most to fill a pint. The yellows, however, hardly change color from greenish-unripe to pale-yellow-ripe, but make up for it with a large size and a crisp acidity that's a neat contrast from the usual berry richness. All in all, the two of us picked twenty pints, which amounted to six reds, two oranges and two yellows each. Louise teased us, saying she'd hoped we were going to pick the fields clean for them.²

Then we managed to leave three pints there. Not paying attention before we left, it wasn't until we started to divvy up our haul in the parking lot of my apartment that this became apparent. So, after dropping Emily at home, I made the trek back down to Brooklyn. Fortunately, the extra pints were still sitting in the farm's cooler, so it was easily remedied.³

Now, you'd think I'd take this opportunity to reflect on the fact that I'd been having a forgetful day, and pause a moment to consider anything else I might have forgotten. But, no. I proceeded to leave my jacket there, out in the field, to be rained upon all night long. It's been found, is hanging up in the barn, and I'll have to think of how to thank Paul and Louise for bringing it back to me at Saturday's market.

* * * * *

¹Sharon would want to kill me, until she saw how adorable they are. Every person there just about melted in their presence.

²Saves them the effort, so it's win-win. Assuming I could make use of that many berries at once.

³Paul was going to make up for it at the next market if someone else'd taken them home, but I'm relieved it didn't come to that. I don't want to take advantage of them because of my error. (Their error, either, which I don't consider this.)