In the heady days of summer, it is particularly easy to gaze out the office window and dream the Raspberry Dream. In the Raspberry Dream, you walk to your raspberry patch in the warm morning sunshine. The dewy grass brushes your lightly tanned skin as thrushes and cedar waxwings herald your arrival. The encumbered bushes verily toss their berries into your vintage, flea-market-find basket. As you make your way home, you begin to imagine all the jams and vinaigrettes that you will produce, eventually forming your own private label that will grow into a conglomerate that would make Martha envious.
Call it the American Dream, call it the Raspberry Dream, call it what you will—being your own boss means never having to be stuck in a cubicle on a blissfully warm afternoon. Of course, Raspberry Reality has to take into account pestilence, drought, anti-redberry diet fads, and hours upon hours of sweaty work during the hottest months. But somewhere between the dreamy berry patch where critters break into song, and the massive fields worked by migrant laborers for Driscoll’s in California or Mexico, the berry of inspiration waits for you. In this month, when sultry summer days make us all want to quit our jobs, why not turn to the raspberry patch for a little bit of guidance?
Raspberries have been prized for ages. Rubus idaeus is thought to have been named as such by the ancient Romans because it grew thickly on the slopes of Mount Ida in Crete (which is overrun with wild raspberries even today). As for their ruby nature, the Greeks believed that a mountain nymph, whilst picking raspberries to appease the gods, scratched her breast on the thorny bush and marked the berries for eternity. The “rasp” comes from the obsolete English word raspis and is thought to be a reference to the slightly hairy surface of the berry. Raspberries have also been known as hindberries because of their favor with deer, and caneberries, referring to the plant’s arching stem when it’s laden with fruit.
Supplementing the common red raspberry are white, yellow, purple, and black varieties—but a black raspberry is not the same as a blackberry, though they are from the same botanical family. Both fruits are composed of drupelets around a core; however, when picked, the raspberry leaves its core on the plant while the blackberry takes its along. The difference lies in the resulting softness and delicacy of the raspberry, whose fragile structure lends to it a juiciness the blackberry can only dream of. Some say that the berries love to be harvested, as the bush may yield bigger and plumper berries the more they are gathered through the season.
Raspberry plants are known as brambles (thanks to their membership in the rose family), and they have the thorns to prove it. Red raspberries tend to be hearty and aggressive, spreading easily and returning year after year with abundant crops. This characteristic makes them perfect for the Minnesota climate, where early and more fragile berries succumb to bad weather.
In fact, the area known as West Minneapolis back in the 1890s was known for its dairy farms, lake cabins, and rolling hills thriving with raspberry brambles. Berry farming became so important to the area that it inspired spin-off businesses like the Hopkins Fruit Package Company, which made the little berry boxes that cradled the fruit on its journey eastward. It also helped build the towns that make up the western metro area. For more than fifty years, berry farms created jobs for young people, often providing them housing as they relocated from far-off towns. These people stayed on after the growing season, started families, and set their roots in what became the thriving western suburbs of today.
During the Great Depression, the city of Hopkins threw a “Raspberry Day” picnic to help bolster community spirit. Everyone who came to the town center got a free bowl of raspberries. It was hoped that they would also share the warmth of a summer day, enjoy each other’s company—and spend a little hard-earned money with the vendors lining the streets. Do you feel the Raspberry Dream working? The erstwhile community picnic is now the Hopkins Raspberry Festival, replete with Raspberry Queens, pie-eating contests, the five-mile Raceberry Jam, a pig roast and more—ten full days’ worth of trimmings that give the raspberry its due and help us savor the great American summer.
After basking in the warmth of this festival, celebrating its seventieth year this month, your next stop should be a U-Pick. Also known as a PYO (Pick Your Own), the U-Pick offers a dose of reality with your Raspberry Dream. The Brambleberry Farm in Pequot Lakes is a tremendous place to roll up your sleeves and act like a farmer for a day (or maybe just an hour or two). Put in some work under the hot sun, and meditate on what it means that something so rewarding has to come with thorns. Before departing with the delicious fruits of your labor, check out what the Brambleberry gang has done with their dream—don’t leave without their award-winning jams, fresh herbs, or local honey. Closer to the Cities, the Afton Raspberry Company provides a Picker’s Patio where you can enjoy lunch after a morning of toil in the thicket.
If, by then, you’ve realized that dreaming the dream and working the dream are two different things, you might want to pop over to your local Linder’s outpost for a single raspberry plant that you can nurture and grow. For some people, dreaming the dream—just enjoying the possibilities of life—is enough.
Raspberry Cheers
Hopkins Raspberry Festival
July 8-18
(952) 931-0878
www.hopkinsraspberryfestival.com
Brambleberry Farm
4002 Davis St., Pequot Lakes, Minn.
(218) 568-8483
Mid-July through September; call ahead
Afton Raspberry Company
1421 Neal Ave. S., Afton, Minn.
(651) 436-7631
End of August through early October
Linder’s Garden Center
270 W. Larpenteur Ave., St. Paul
(651) 488-1927
www.linders.com
Café Latte (Raspberry Cream Torte pictured)
850 Grand Ave., St Paul
(651) 224-5687
www.cafelatte.com
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