BPF Bramblings

July 10, 2025

While picking raspberries the other day, an employee asked what were the plant flowers that smelled like lilac. The answer surprised her, as it was the milkweed plant and she had never noticed the flowers before. The smell of this lovely wild flower is absolutely amazing. We let some of the milkweed grow in the raspberry rows to attract bees and other pollinators and just because I love milkweed. The only plant that Monarch butterfly caterpillars eat, the milkweed has a special growing spot of honor around the farm.

With the decline of the Monarch in our region and around the country, I try to play a part in the  beautiful butterfly’s (hopeful) population resurgence. I saw a butterfly on one of the blossoms recently and snapped a photo with my phone of the lovely Yellow Swallowtail as you can see above. It was a pretty cool shot, with raspberries, the butterfly and the blossoms rounding out a perfect trio for the day. It is hard some days of late to make anything make sense with the world a cacophony of noise and ugliness on the political and world event stage, and to refocus on something natural and beautiful is a little bit healing for my raw, chafed soul.

I try to find something pretty or unusual or just plain ordinary every day to help me keep my focus. As a farmer, the stresses are many, the hours are long, and the to-do list never ends, so just a peek into the somehow simpler, more beautiful and spiritual realm is needed to keep sanity in the room. I can get that soul-healing spot in the day by turning off the television, turning off all the phone apps that bring me bad and worse news, turning a half-deaf ear to the complaints or whines of the day and looking to the clouds in the sky, the grass under my feet, the lone daisy growing at the side of the road or the Swallowtail in the milkweeds and find a reminder of what is good and clean and important to my heart, my mind and my soul.

I urge you to do the same.