Vol. 50.1 – Berry Picking with Family and Flies

For Them Days 50.1, we asked folks: what’s your favourite Labrador berry? From the stories we heard, we learned that the people of Labrador love to pick berries, and that the flies of Labrador love to eat berry pickers. Interviews were conducted by Abigale Csekey.

Heather Angnatok told us that bakeapples are always a reminder of time spent with her grandmother – even if their first time bakeapple picking together wasn’t so sweet: 

“So we were at [my family’s] fishing cabin just outside of Nain and it was bakeapple season. She would be gone long days, you know, coming back with buckets and buckets of bakeapples. But one day, she said “I’m going bakeapple pickin’ right behind the cabin. So would you like to come?” And of course I said, “Yes! I would love to come.” So she gave me a bucket, and I had a jacket, but unfortunately it didn’t have a hood. 

So off we went, into the back of the cabin, a very wooded area, and marshy, and I swear we walked for miles, miles. As a little girl, it seemed far, you know?

At first I was very happy that I was following my grandmother. It was just me and her. And she found a patch of bakeapples and we were picking, and I started to pick a couple, but then there was a couple of flies… and then there was more flies… there was so many flies! I was so bothered, that I put my bucket down and I waved my jacket over my head,  just to, you know, get out of the flies ‘cause they were so bothersome.

And every now and then I’d peek at my grandmother, and she was pickin’ and pickin’, and her bucket was… not as fast as I wanted her to fill it up.

I remember that day so well because I was just so happy that I was finally able to follow her. And I must’ve been only about eight years old. And we were gone for hours. I mean, if you know any grandmothers out there, you know they’re not going home until they fill up their bucket. And that’s exactly what she did, she wouldn’t go home until the bucket was full.

For me, I had wasted all the three or four berries that I had in my bucket, swinging my jacket over my head so hard that I lost all the berries, but I did not care one bit. So finally, we went home, and I was so flustered. I was so hot and I was so bothered by the flies, and the flies didn’t even bother her. She had her bucket full and she never said much and she didn’t appear to be very disappointed that, you know, I didn’t even have any berries in my bucket.

And when we got back to the cabin, she put a little bowl out on the table, filled it up with bakeapples for me. And she poured a little bit sweetened condensed milk over it, because that is my favourite way of having it, and so I devoured that.

Ever since then, I don’t really love picking bakeapples but I understand the value. They say bakeapples is the most precious berry out there, because of the difficulty, and sometimes they don’t grow—like all berries, depending on the marsh and the weather conditions and whatnot.

But anyway, bakeapples are so precious, and throughout the years it turned into being a very fond memory of my grandmother. 

I was the only one who was allowed … that’s what I thought, right? But little did I know that everyone else knew there’s going to be a lot of flies. But I did not know that.”

Mallory Harrigan has learned to embrace flies as part of the bakeapple picking experience: 

“I love a bakeapple fresh off the bush but, when I first came to Labrador, I’d never picked a bakeapple in my life. I’m from the Avalon, there’s bakeapples up on Trepassy Barrens, but they’re not like Labrador berries, they ripen slower, they’re brighter, they’re redder—they’re just better overall in Labrador.

Anyway, so my boyfriend is from William’s Harbour, Cliff Russell, and I went out there with him and I never experienced flies like this before in my life. So, he said he was gonna go bakeapple pickin’ up on the marsh and I said, “Listen, I hate berry pickin’. I don’t wanna go” — I actually hated it. I was like, “If you’re goin’ berry pickin’, I’m stayin’ home” and he said, “No! No! No! I promise, we’re not going… I’ll take you… we’ll just go up and I’m just going to bring Mother up there and we’re just going to show her…” And his nephew Lucas was with her at the time. “We’re just going to show them where to go bakeapple pickin’ up on the marsh and we’ll come right back, I promise.” When we got there, I was like, “Okay, the flies are eating me, get back on the bike, get me out of here,” and—it was like a magic trick. Like have you ever seen a magic trick where someone pulls a coin out from behind your ear? He was like, “Oh my God, what’s that caught in your hair? Oh my God, it’s a butter tub! Well, would you look at that? Well, we’ll just about fill this up now.” 

I said, “You bring me home! Now!” That was the first fight we ever had! He mysteriously hauled a butter tub out of nowhere. I was like, “Put it down. Bring me home. I told you!” and he was like, “Oooh, it’s only a butter tub.”

Anyways, so we got over that and then I found out bakeapples go for a hundred dollars a gallon, and now I love it. Now I’m up there with a beef bucket like, “Don’t bring me home yet, where’s my fly jacket? Let’s go.”

My Mudder loves bakeapples too, but they’re hard to get on the Avalon, so she came to William’s Harbour one summer. And we have a certain spot we like to go to with Cliff’s Mudder, and it used to be a whole thing when his father was alive. So we had to go on a boat to get there, and of course you’re outside, you’re out on a hill, and there’s no cell service. There’s no way to get ahold of each other, and you don’t want to be carrying anything besides for a bucket of berries and your fly stuff—you already got enough stuff to lug around, so like we just leave the sat at home. 

And so we went over to the spot and we were pickin’ the berries and Mom’s all excited and she realized how hard it was, up on the marsh and with the flies eatin’ ya, and she wasn’t used to the flies. I had adjusted at this point, like I said, a hundred dollars a gallon, more now. So she was like, “I’m ready to go home”. 

Cliff’s father wasn’t in the greatest shape to be climbing up over the hills and going in the marsh cause it’s hard work! He would go on the boat and go jiggin’ or something. So he’d go for a jig and then he’d come back and then the way he would alert us to come back to where he’d drop us off, is he’d take a shotgun in the boat. So when he came back he’d shoot it up in the air and when we heard the bang we were like, “Okay time to go, time to get in the boat and go.” But my Mudder, we never filled her in on that, cause that’s just how we did it, we never told Mudder that. And she was already suffering up crawling over the barrens, “Oh my god, the flies got me eat, this is so horrible,” and all of the sudden she started hearin’ gunshots. She said she didn’t know what way to run! All of us are running towards the gunshots and she’s like, “What is happening!” Anyway she didn’t know what was going on and she said, “Well now I see why they’re a hundred dollars a gallon, I’m never doing that again.””

And for Mina Campbell, picking berries of all sorts has always been a family experience (and, yes, there will be flies): 

“I like picking bakeapples too but they’re hard to come by here. My husband and I used to go out to Williams Harbour, where his family is from, and it was really good there. And some places were hard to get to and I remember going with his dad and it was a strange place to me because I was never there before. He was a really fast walker and picker, and I was smoking then, smoking cigarettes, and he used to say, “Sit down now and have a smoke break.” You know, we were walking for a while, so I would sit down and only have a couple puffs and he’d be gone again, and I’d have to jump up and go on because I was scared I was going to be lost. 

My grandmother who raised me was a big-time berry picker as well. And I remember we used to pick close by here in North West River, like at the end of the air strip. There was no houses there then, and up Sunday Hill, different places. There are still berries that grow in and around there, around the sawmills. And I remember going home and leaving dinner time, to go to school – this is when I was still in school, a teenager. And I would say, “Grandma, wait for me to go berry pickin’. I’ll be out of school 3:30, and I’ll come with you,” and she said, “Okay.” When I got home there was a note on the door: “Gone berry pickin – Gram”. Something like that written on it.

So anyway I took off because she was old then, like probably in her late seventies or something. She was walking far from our house into the airstrip, back of the airstrip was kind of far. So I took off because I had an idea on where she was. And I could see someone walking up the road towards me and it looked like they were hauling a toboggan or something like this.

As I got closer, this was my grandmother! She had her raincoat tied up with her berries tied in it in a bag in her raincoat and she was hauling it along like a toboggan. That’s probably how much she liked berry picking, and that’s probably how much I like berry pickin’. I would probably do the same as her. 

I always have a freezer dedicated to berries. I’m a berry picker. And I can’t wait now for the blueberries. There’s bes a lot of flies eh, that’s one of the worst things about berry picking. So it’s nice if it’s a windy day. When I used to smoke, it was really good for berry picking because I just put a cigarette in the corner of my mouth and puff it, and it keeps the flies away.

Berry picking is also a good little social time too. Like my sister and I, that’s something we do. We hardly ever get together because our lives are so busy, but we always make a berry pickin’ day.”