Gooseberries in the Market Garden

Last year, I received a call from a Russian immigrant couple who lived about 40 minutes from my New Jersey farm. The woman anxiously asked whether I still had gooseberries. I explained the season was over and offered to add her and her husband to a notification list for the following year. After a few rounds of “Are you sure you don’t have any berries left?” I invited them to come by and glean any remaining berries free of charge. They were at my doorstep within the hour.

The visibly pregnant woman and her husband descended on the plants and ate their way through most of the remaining berries. They even managed to set aside a few to take home. As she was picking and eating, the woman exclaimed that she hadn’t appreciated gooseberries when she was growing up, and her husband had been searching in vain