wild raspberries

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The bridge to a bridge

IMG_1434This was Wednesday’s view looking west across the footbridge from the preserve-side of Cranberry Run. The photo wasn’t taken Wednesday, but Antioch College Intern Emma snapped it a couple of weeks ago. Since it was dry as a bone from before that point until Wednesday night, the photo could have been taken three days ago.

A fox squirrel probably lifted the pine cone between then and then, but you get the picture.

Historic records and reminiscences indicate that Cranberry Run, known affectionately in these parts as the Little Cranberry, was a trickle narrow enough for a skip and a jump to cross. The rush of water, sped via human ingenuity north through the Allen County and the southeast corner of Putnam, has accelerated the bankfull width to a current 10 to 15 feet as it falls to Riley Creek.

That’s a little more than a hop to cross. The first Cranberry Run footbridge (in my memory) stretched from the west to a landbridge between the stone quarry and the Run. After channelization in the 1980s, before the Army Corps theoreticized and modeled this ineffectual practice away to leave a native waterway to do what native waterways do best, another bridge was built at a bend 100 yards south. When that gave way, the most recent bridge was engineered downstream again.

IMG_1481This footbridge spans the little creek about 1/8 of a mile upstream of the confluence with the Riley, itself a tributary to the Blanchard River. The structure was built nearly a decade ago and was designed to allow floodwaters to pass through widely-spaced slats. Each end was boxed around trees on opposite banks. Chains were attached to the telephone pole bases, buried and stretched to anchor to other trees.

The bridge held fast until last year when the weathering effects of floodplain fills and heavy windfall from the 2012 derecho carved away enough bank that the anchor trees caved. In 2015, volunteer David Seitz winched and wrangled the structure back into shape, but he knew this was a stop-gap. Sure enough, Wednesday’s 3 to 4 inches of fast, hard rainfall swelled the stream into a fast-moving lake. This morning, I parted the black raspberries along the path and saw that the bridge now angles northwest to southeast rather than due east.IMG_1487

“Am needing a ride this PM,” said David after he saw the photos. He tells me that moving it to another location will probably require disassembly and rebuilding, as well as a lift. Yet, “Possible,” is how he signed off.
Sounds promising to me. Anything is, after all.
Any takers?
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At long last, the pie

PieDo you remember this pie, made with wild black raspberries picked right here on the Quarry Farm? A photo of one production of this pie was posted on July 1. What followed were requests for the recipe.

Summer is still with us. The black raspberry picking time may have passed, the last nodules picked clean by hungry birds, but just in case you have some put up in the freezer, here’s that recipe. If you are fresh out, other late summer fruits may suit your taste buds.

BERRY STREUSEL PIE

Crust for single crust pie

  • 5 cups black raspberries or mixed berries such as blackberries, blueberries, and black raspberries
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons finely shredded lemon peel, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, or ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1. Line a 9-inch pie plate with pastry for single-crust pie.

2. In a large bowl combine the sugar and flour. Stir in berries and lemon peel (or lemon juice or cinnamon). Gently toss berries until coated. (If using frozen berries, let mixture stand for 45 minutes or until fruit is partially thawed but still icy.)

3. Transfer berry mixture to the pastry-lined pie plate. Crimp edge of pastry as desired.

Sprinkle with Streusel Topping (below).

4. To prevent overbrowning, cover edge of pie with foil. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 25 minutes (or 50 minutes for frozen fruit). Remove foil. Bake pie for 25 to 30 minutes more or until filling is bubbly and topping is golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Streusel Topping: Stir together ½ cup all-purpose flour and ½ cup packed brown sugar. Using a pastry blender, cut in 3 tablespoons butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

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Black raspberries and more

Back FieldIt’s been summer for a little over a week now. On the quarry, and elsewhere in the region, I suppose, that means raspberries. Here they’re mostly wild and black, though there are a few domestic red raspberry brambles planted in the big back field nearly two decades ago. Now the picking of raspberries, dependent on where it is that they’re being picked, can involve some little bit of a blood-letting. Here, along the wildest areas of The Quarry Farm, that is certainly the case.

RaspberriesThere are the brambles, of course, with their little thorns that snag cloth and skin. And then there are also the multiflora rose bushes, the thorns of which are a bit more than little and, consequently, do a bit more damage. Hawthorne and honey locust trees have thorns that, for the unwary, can prove literally life-threatening: honey locust thorns can grow to as long as five or six inches, come in clusters of ten or twelve at a time and are as sharp as needles. But botany is only one aspect of the blood bath. Mosquitos range in clouds of hundreds, along with midges, horseflies, deerflies and a host of other little biting beasts.

Damselfly            White Tail           Sedge with Moss           Ivy

Turkey VultureBut the berries themselves make the challenges worthwile, not to mention the sights that come along with the raspberries. Things like dragonflies and damselflies seesawing back and forth as they chase their meals, those same pesky insects that are intent on syphoning blood; little black toads that scurry from spot to spot; robberflies pursuing the same kinds of prey as the dragons and damsels, but in a much more “point A to point B” kind of way; turkey vultures soaring across skies of blue and grey, catching thermals and various drafts that send them scooting to the horizon; and ropes of grapevine and poison ivy.

The berries, though, are the goal, and this year’s crop is bountiful. Speaking of which, the telephone just rang and it seems there’s a pie cooling on a counter not too terribly far from here.

Time to go.

If you’re lucky, we’ll save you a piece.

Pie