Sauvie Island
Vince took us to Sauvie Island to go berry picking on his first day off with us. It was amazing to be on an “island farm” where you could get a box and fill it to your heart’s delight with goodies. I felt like I was on a healthy Willy Wonka trip eating off the bushes. It was great fun. I imagined myself as part of the food chain like a bird or deer just munching off nature with no middleman. We took a tractor pulled ride into the farm, and got to business plucking marionberries, blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries. They were all designated by colored flags of the same shade.
The massive cabbage patch evoked images of that obssessive doll cult from the 80’s, the mom-crazed Anne Geddes photos of preemies in leaf ware, and the 50’s black and white film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Yes, it was kinda creepy but it was fun to see the life of real veggies in their habitat. The heads were actually quite stubbornly rooted into the ground. When we made our way home with the cabbage the “size of a beach ball”, I made a cool-tasting Vietnamese poached chicken salad foraging some of the wild mint in our host’s yard. Everyone in Portland has an awesomely overgrown urban garden in their front lawn. YUM!
