4th of July Pasture

Ant on red clover

It was the 4th of July and all our relatives had gone to the lake. All except us. Dad was a small potato farmer and if the plants were growing so fast that he could hardly keep up with the hoeing, he’d be out in the field on the John Deere, going as fast as he could. He promised that if he got done soon enough, we’d still head up for the cookout. 

Meanwhile, Mom had other ideas. The morning was cool and fresh, and I followed her to the old pasture that was spread out on a steep hill, about a half mile from the house.

The pasture had been part of a larger lot originally, deeded by the state to William Knight in the 1860s. A shoemaker from Hollis, with a wife and kids, Knight saw a chance at a better life by heading to the newly-opened, virgin lands of northern Maine where he was not beholdin' to anyone.

It's a mystery whether Knight, a Civil War vet, had anything to do with a story passed down about worn-out Civil War horses being marched up to that very land and made to stand around a long, deep hole. They were shot and pushed into that hole and buried there, we were told. But with no markers or written history of the event, all I knew for sure were the whispers of the lone 100-year-old tree that marked the border there between us and our neighbor's field of grain.

In the early days of farming, crops were planted on this land: potatoes, red clover; oats. But when tractors were made bigger, it was harder to harvest crops on such a hill. So the land was converted into pasture until the cattle were sold and the hill became a wild meadow where bears played and moose treaded in the brook below.

The old pasture held a special power over Mother, however, when there had been enough rain that spring and enough sun in early summer to produce wild strawberries.

Her instructions were brief.

“You spread the grass like so and look near the ground. If you see red, it’s either ripe berries or those red-leaves that fool you. Now go away from here. I’ve got a good patch and you have to find your own.”

After spreading the grass with my feet and wandering around, listening to birds singing in the nearby woods and watching white clouds sail by, I found my own patch. I could smell the sweetness of the berries before I saw them. They were so ripe that they almost fell into my hands as I placed them into the bowl Mom had given me. I ate a few and stepped on more and spilled some that the ants went after.

I was alone, it seemed, working for my own food, working where ever I wanted. I felt like the Knights might have felt when they, too, found their first good patch of strawberries on their own land.

When the sun was high and hot and we had enough berries, we hulled them at the house and Mom made a big pan of baking powder biscuits, mixed the berries with sugar, and whipped some cream. That night we had wild strawberry shortcake for dessert.

By then, I had forgotten about the lake. The cousins would’ve had cultivated berries for their shortcake, no doubt, bought from a store.

But these berries were free and sweeter than cultivated. And we were free to pick them again, someday--if we wanted to.