farmdoc's blog post number 269

Nowadays I deliberately take the time to watch Nature. And I see first-hand how talented she is; how beautiful her work. Shapes, patterns, designs. Her virtuosity’s breathtaking. An example is the normal distribution curve. Its symmetry and sensuous lines enchant me. Almost all continuous biological variables (e.g. height, weight) conform to its shape – a few up one end, a few up the other, and most between under the hump. I write of the normal curve today, because of raspberries. The season here started 2-3 weeks ago, with a few raspberries each day. Since then, day-by-day the quantity’s gradually increased. And the increase’s been accelerating as the curve’s hump nears. My friend Liz, who now lives in South Australia, used to boast she’d pick a kilogram of raspberries each day in peak season. This year I passed that milestone last Sunday. And the daily yield still increases. This may be the best season ever, thanks to Sweetheart Vivienne’s judicious pruning, the weather, wombat poo fertiliser, and factors unknown. In my more obsessional days I would’ve graphed the daily output, or recorded it on a spreadsheet. But now the kilogram-per-day threshold’s been reached, I’m content to eat some berries as I pick them, and to share some with the birds. However I know that, as sure as eggs are eggs, the daily crop will soon begin to dwindle as summer fades into autumn.