Raspberry Memories from Maine

I was fortunate to run across some absolutely breathtaking, gorgeous and huge raspberries at Costco on Sunday. Honestly, they might be the most beautiful specimens of Rubus Idaeus I have ever seen . . . that is except for the ones that I picked as a young girl in Maine.



My parents moved from a little house in Topsham to a century-old farmhouse on 24 acres in Brunswick, Maine when I was in the third grade. In the old days, the home had been owned by the Rush family, famous for selling fruit and vegetables in town.

Shortly after we moved in, my mother ran across a deep thicket of raspberry bushes. I don't know if you have ever had the opportunity to pick raspberries in a long-overgrown thicket, but let me tell you--it was bliss. The stalks of the bushes themselves were a good 10 inches around at the base they were so old. And the fruit--amazing. Much like they did on Little House, my mother and sister and I would go and pick raspberries, filling our tin pails and baskets until they were tumbling over with fruit. My sister and I could actually sit underneath the bushes they were so big, and sit we would, for hours while we stained our lips and fingertips with the bright red juice from the berries.

My favorite memory from picking raspberries would be the muffins my mother would make right when we got home. Hot out of the oven she would slather each half with good old Kate's Farmhouse butter and we would dig in. It is funny that I can't remember details from my senior prom, or my first date, but I can remember exactly what those muffins taste like.

Unfortunately, that thicket of pure raspberry-gold is gone, long since bulldozed to make way for urban sprawl. Those prized bushes were on a section of the old Rush farm property that was across the street from my parent's house, and they could not afford to buy it with their 24 acre parcel. Had they been able to, I know I could bring James home to Maine in the summer and get him a little tin bucket and he could go picking to his heart's content.