As I mentioned in this post, my mom makes jam every summer. Most of what she cans comes from fruit that she and my dad pick themselves. The blueberries come from a Pick-Your-Own place on Sauvie Island, the plums comes from the yards of friends and the blackberries are typically come from a wild patch in the Columbia River Gorge. This year they drove out to the regular blackberry patch, only to discover that it had been cut back severely during some road work. They picked what they could and headed back to Portland, without enough berries to make a batch of jam.
The next night, they headed for a blackberry bramble in their neighborhood that my mom discovered one night while walking the dog, to see if they couldn't make up the difference. They started picking, wandering around a bit as you do when you are following the patterns of available berries. They had been picking for awhile, excited to have found a source of berries, when they heard a woman say, "Excuse me?" Looking up, they realized that they had inadvertently crossed over into someone's yard. She continued, "I was planning on making pie." My parents apologized (and were relieved to notice that there were still tons of berries left on the bushes) and headed home with what they had already picked (luckily, there was a plenty there for jam).
In this case, it was just an honest mistake. However, there have been times when my mom and I have been a little bit more deliberate in our foraging of fruit. Let's hear your stories of liberated fruits and vegetables.
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