Looking back at my log for June 2007, I noticed that I picked three quarts of raspberries on June 14. Yet when I trudged to the berry patch on Tuesday, June 17, this year, I observed that they are not yet close to being ripe. That middle berry in the cluster that tends to always ripen first was still shinning bright red in the afternoon sun. Their cousins, the blackberries, appeared to be at least two weeks away from harvest. I suppose the prolonged cold spell in May set things back a bit.

When berry picking times rolls around, I always remember my experience during my five year sojourn in South Carolina. On my way home from work one June evening, I could see blackberries shinning in the fields along the road. Recalling the succulent taste of fresh blackberry cobbler in my youth, I raced home, got me a bucket, and went blackberry picking. The berries were beautiful and it did not take me long at all to fill my container.

As my wife "looked" the berries and began to process them we made a startling observation. They had a terribly bitter taste. They did not taste anything at all like the old West Virginia blackberries that we had both enjoyed during our youth. The end result was we threw them out.

Worse, about two days later, I came down with the worst case of chigger bites that I had ever experienced.

The berries were only one example. We soon noticed that the tomatoes and everything else in the little garden we tried to raise in the white clay soil did not taste right. So we gave up gardening. It slowly began to sink in how fortunate we were to have grown up enjoying the rich, fertile soil of West Virginia.

When the first opportunity presented itself, we scurried back home to the hills and have been enjoying raspberries, blackberries, and those absolutely incomparable West Virginia tomatoes ever since.

In defense of South Carolina, we found the people down there to be warmer and friendlier that West Virginians. We thoroughly enjoyed living among them. In many ways the "sandlappers" know how to enjoy life better than us hill country folk. But, bless their hearts, they just don't know what real food tastes like.