The First & Last Harvest

I have had a mulberry tree in every house Ive ever lived in and strangely enough this is the first time I have made mulberry pie.

Traditions hold powerful emotions & the Mulberry tree tradition is just as powerful as any other. All five of us stand at the base of the tree and eat mulberries straight off the branch. We did this everyday until one of two things happened.... the tree stopped producing .... or the wrigglers entered the fruit.

This year our tree had berrie's along time before our first sighting of fruit fly so with basket in hand I dared to break tradition & create a desert.

I snuck out every morning to pick berries from the tree to hide in a container in the freezer. It took 5 days of picking & 5 afternoons of tears when again there were no berries on the tree, but I finally had the 420 grams of Mulberries I needed for the pie.

My Nanna Smith's Mulberry Pie

420 grams Mulberries

2/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup all purpose white flour

double crust pastry

Drain berries in a sieve

Preheat oven about 200 in fan forced

Heat sugar, flour & juice drained from the berries until thick

Put into bottom of pie crust

Lattice the top of the pie

Rest in refrigerator for half hour

Bake until golden

Serve with cream or ice cream.... or both

Verdict: They LURVED IT!!!