This morning, my friend Mark stopped by to see if Sullivan and I were interested in going on a bike ride.

Mark has a really cool Dutch cargo bike called a “Bakfiets“, it’s like a normal bike except it has a wheel-barrow-sized cargo bay up front. It has a bunch of other nice amenities as well, including handcuff lock, internal-gears, and head/tail lights. They’re kind of pricey and a bit difficult to get used to, but definitely handy to have!

One of the nice features in the Bakfiets is that the cargo area has seatbelts built for children. We strapped Sullivan into the cargo area, right next to Lena (Mark’s daughter), and grabbed a plastic container for collecting blackberries (the fruit, not the PDA).

The bike ride was great! We rode over to the Cardinal Greenway path, and took that all the way up to Springwood park. The Cardinal Greenway is absolutely beautiful this time of year, full of lush green foliage. I really enjoyed riding it, but I was equally as excited that Sullivan was getting to have this experience — I really want him to grow up with an appreciation for the natural world.

Once we got to the park, we had to go off road a little bit to get to the site, but that was just as fun.

I wouldn’t say there was quite a “plethora” of blackberries there, but there were definitely some good sized patches.

The trick to picking blackberries, if you’ve never done it before, is to very gently tug on the darkest berries you can see. The dark violet color is when they’re ripest, but you can sometimes get dark-red ones to pop off. If they’re ready, it’s super easy — if you have to tug too hard, they’re just not ready yet.

I showed Sullivan which kind to pick; He knows the word “dark”, so I think he understood. I also showed him that you can pick them off and eat them; He definitely enjoyed that. Lena would pick them and eat them too, she ended up with blackberry goo dribbled down her shirt.

Sullivan can’t quite say “berry”, but his approximation sounds like  “maize” — it took me a while to figure out that’s what he meant.  At one point, he pointed to the plastic bowl and said “bise” (his word for spider) and when I looked down, I noticed that there was a daddy-long-legs crawling in our bowl of berries!

Looking aroudn some more, I noticed MANY daddy-long-legs crawling throughout the berry patches.

When we’re gardening, I’ll see maybe 1 or 2 of those spindly-legged spiders crawling around our house and plants. Today, I saw at LEAST a dozen or two of them crawling almost exclusively on the blackberry bushes. Interestingly, it seemed they liked to hide in the clusters of berries, with only their legs sticking out. I’m not certain, but it appeared as though the spiders were waiting to ambush flies that would land on the berries.

Once we had collected as many blackberries as we could that were ripe (approximately just under a quart, I’d guess), we packed up and headed home.

Sullivan kept wanting to eat more “maize”, so I had to keep reminding him that we’ll have some berries in “cake” (pancakes) when we get home.

The recipe for pancakes that we use is something Melissa found online, although I don’t know the website. Apologies to the original recipe creator! (If you find this, let me know and I’ll credit you!) The recipe is:

• 1.5 Cup flour
• 3.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1.25 cups milk
• 1 egg
• 3 tablespoons  melted butter (I melt it in the microwave)

We call them “Lazy Husband Pancakes”, even though these take a little more work than making them from pancake mix. They’re WAY better than bisquick or aunt jemima. And, IMHO, way better than anything I’ve had at IHOP.

This time, we added roughly 1 cup, maybe 1.5 cups, of blackberries, after washing them to wash away any bugs.

I fired up the griddle (we bought a large griddle at Meijers specifically for making pancakes and quesadillas… I highly recommend getting one, it makes the whole process so much easier!) and doled out the pancakes.

The whole time I was making them, Sullivan kept asking me for “maize?” and I had to keep telling him “I’m putting them in cake!” He LOVES blackberries, apparently.

The pancakes were DELICIOUS! Sullivan really liked them.

My favorite part of this whole experience was that Sullivan and I both got to enjoy a pretty natural experience — he got to see that berries come from plants, not from stores, and that we can do fun things that don’t involve over-stimulating or video screens (I know, ironic coming from me, but even so).

Harvesting our garden will probably be a lot more fun this year, since he’ll be able to pick out tomatoes and then bring them inside, wash them, and eat them!

I would really like him to grow up with an appreciation of where our food comes from. He may eventually decide he’d like to try eating meat, and that’s ok — we just want him to be aware of the food lifecycle.

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