Summer Bounty: Three days, three markets

Blackberries clustered against the sky, heavy and dark as thunder, which we plucked and gobbled, hour after hour, lips purple, hands stained to the wrists.

Cider With Rosie, Laurie Lee

Three farmers’ markets in the last three days mean a kitchen table overloaded with fresh bounty.

No gooseberries or blackcurrants this week but at Arlington on Thursday there were plenty of raspberries, redcurrants and just look at these blackberries!

Nothing like the dense flavor of those from the hedgerows of childhood but still delicious. They were smaller in those days too – except when rainy weather made them swell and diluted the intensity of the flavor.

No wonder poets  – Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, and Galway Kinnell among them –  have written about going blackberrying and eating straight from the brambles.

And it’s not just the berries. The peaches are ripe and delicious right now, the corn is sweet and then there’s all the gorgeous root veggies and the greens.  Good enough to eat!.