Day 37 #100DaysOfOldDays

There wasn’t a child in the country who didn’t go out blackberry picking in the 70’s and into the 80’s. And of course long before that too.

We’d go in small groups, walk for miles in our wellies to find the best blackberry bushes. Our buckets sat nearby, and we used a can or a jar to collect the berries; the red and green ones went in as well the dark purple juicy ones. When our can was full we’d tip it into the bucket. Scratches on our hands didn’t bother us, neither did damp feet when our wellies had holes in them.

On a Saturday we stayed out until our buckets were full. We went for as many days until the blackberry bushes were bare.

We did it for the fun, but mostly it was for the money. We’d take our berries back into town and bring them into Peter Murtagh’s yard. He weighed them and paid us. It was very little but a fortune to us. If it had been a good day’s picking we went straight to Francey McDonald’s for sweets but didn’t spend all our money. We had to have something to show our parents for our long day’s work!

The more berries we had in our buckets, the more money we got—which is why we didn’t eat very many. A certain lad or lassie would add a few stones into their buckets to increase the weight. Not me!