We'd pick enough wild plums for a years worth of jelly. Can't find a wild plum anymore. In the summer, Mom would give me a bucket and tell me not to come back home till it was full of dewberries. We had dewberry cobbler several times a week when they were ripe. Same thing for scuppernogs and muscadines in the fall. We'd fill five gallon buckets home from the woods at my grandparents. I delivered a bucket to an older man in town one day, and the next Sunday at church he told me he ate them like he did when he was a kid until his mouth as raw from sucking on the husks.

We'd also pick up pecans on the weekend. Our trees and all over the county. Probably an attempt to keep us under their thumb, to a degree. We always had a deep freezer full year-round, and every Christmas my mom would give me a gallon bag of shelled and cleaned pecans to give to my teachers. They always acted like it was a great gift, but l thought it was kinda goofy. Either they were being nice, or sto-bought pecans were expensive back then too.

We only messed with walnuts once, though. We had yellow hands for weeks.