A Tutorial

How To Harvest Mulberries--A Tutorial in Many Steps

1) Dress in old clothes. I am SO not joking about this. If you think, "Oh, I'll just roll my pants up and be careful not to touch this shirt that I love so much," you will later find yourself with purple pant cuffs and inexplicable mulberry stains on the shoulder of that beloved shirt. (NOT THAT I HAVE DONE THIS.) Of course, the stains can be removed, but it's easier just to avoid having to do so. And don't forget old shoes. Because you will be stepping on many, many mulberries, and the stain-removal trick does not work on leather or rubber.

2) Grab your containers for holding the mulberries once they've been picked, preferably something either large and shallow or small, because if there are too many mulberries in a deeper container, the weight of the mulberries on top will crush the berries on the bottom, resulting in mush on the bottom. Save the juicing of the mulberries for later, when you actually mean to make juice and aren't just inadvertently creating mulberry mush.

3) Next, find a very large tarp, preferably one that is not encrusted in mud from laying out potatoes in the garden or in sheep shit from sheep shearing. This is somewhat difficult. If you're me.

4) Make sure to bring the pruners to whack down that evil thistle plant growing underneath the mulberry tree. Also make sure they're the long-handled kind, because thistles are the botanical equivalent of Satan and that huge one under the mulberry tree will rip your arms all to shit with its Satanic thorns. Bastard.

5) Annihilate the thistle (get thee back, Satan!) and spread your tarp under the tree. Try not to trip over the numerous bamboo shoots that have sprung up in the area. Or the bamboo branches that were cut down by A. many months ago and left strewn all about. Also, don't slip on the mulberries or on any of the sheep shit left behind by those adorable sheep.

6) Grab one of those convenient bamboo branches left on the ground for you to trip over and start whacking the branches of the mulberry tree with it. Try your best to avoid smacking a branch directly above you, unless you want to be caught in a hailstorm of mushy mulberries.

7) Now begins the stoop labor. Except for the obviously red and under ripe mulberries, you must grab each berry with your fingers to test its texture. If it's all gooey and mushy, it's too ripe and you don't want it. So go along the tarp testing all the berries with your fingers, putting the acceptable ones in your not-too-deep receptacle. And staining your fingers an indelible and very attractive blackish purple while you're at it.

8) Try not to fall down the slope while you're doing this.

9) Straighten your aching back, put your containers of mulberries somewhere safe, and shake out the tarp so the rejected berries are flung off of it. Then spread the tarp back out to catch any berries that will fall from the tree on their own before you get back out there to repeat the tree smacking.

10) Stash your berries in the refrigerator until you have enough to make juice, and try futilely to scrub the purple stains from your cuticles.

We won't go into how to make the juice right now. That's a separate tutorial.