Picking berries

You might remember Uncle Wang. He is one our regular drivers and is most famous for giving us two live rabbits and the hare. "Shu Shu," as we call him, is beyond kind to our family. While Tim and Kathi were here, Andy and Tim took the kids on a bike ride to his field to pick "Mao Dou," a kind of bean-harder and bigger than lima beans, but that's the closest thing I can compare them too. They had a really fun time so I decided we should go back! This time we went to pick a Chinese version of blackberries-not as sour-great in cobbler.EG picked a few.Then she discovered my bag and started eating the fruit of my labor as fast as I could pick it!

The only problem with the trip was the Uncle Wang had something else to do after he took us to the spot to pick berries. I guess Uncle Wang thought I would be tough like most of the Chinese farmer women he knows and be able to haul my goods and my two kids all the way home, about a mile walk. But, I am a wimp compared to the hard working farmer ladies here. We walked to the road and I decided to flag down a guy on an electric scooter to help us. He happily took us home and EG and Jack loved the ride.

While I was trying pick berries, I also had to make sure Jack didn't inhale too much dirt, and I had EG eating the berries as fast as I could pick them. Therefore, I ended up coming home with about a cup of berries and two cups of rocks. (Thanks Jack for the rocks!) Nothing like a Blackberry-rock cobbler. Just kidding. In the end, I went out and bought more berries and some strawberries to make a cobbler. That was a lot of work for one cobbler.