The Honorable Harvest
I want to let you in on a little secret. Serviceberries may be the best berry you have never eaten. People and birds love the blue berries that ripen on this native shrub in mid-summer. Now that we are in the season of Thanksgiving, it seems appropriate to reflect upon how Serviceberries can bring birds and people together in mutual appreciation of their sweet, blue goodness.
Serviceberries are a marker of the seasons. They flower early in the spring, and they used to signal when the dirt roads would start to dry out, permitting easy travel. This meant preachers could travel the countryside and give their “services.” This brought people together after the isolation of winter. Serviceberries have always brought people and birds together. The blue berries were an important source of food and stories for Indigenous communities. The beautiful fruit, produced in great abundance, was seen as a tangible expression of the gifts that nature bestows on us.
I was excited to learn that the author of Braiding Sweetgrass focused on Serviceberries in her latest book, The Serviceberry. In it, author Robin Wall Kimmerer asks an important question: Is nature fundamentally competitive or cooperative? A lot hinges on how we answer this question. Throughout the book, Robin reflects on two different ways of seeing the world, exemplified by the gift economy of nature on the one hand and the market economy on the other. She continually reinforces the idea that the worldview we choose to inhabit has implications for our resilience as a species. The dilemma we face is how to loosen the grip of rigid thinking and embrace uncertainty, both of which are hard to do. Fortunately, we have been entwined with berries for thousands of years, and they exert a magnetic pull on our senses that can draw us in and reinvigorate our ancient fascination with life.
The little blue berries that Serviceberries produce dance across our palates and fill us with delight. Robin provides a tantalizing description of their flavor.
“Imagine a fruit that tastes like a blueberry with the satisfying heft of an apple, a touch of rose water, and a minuscule crunch of almond-flavored seeds. They taste like nothing the grocery store has to offer: wild, complex, with a flavor your body recognizes as the real food it has been waiting for.”
In Potowatami, Serviceberries are called “Bozackmin,” which means the best berry. “Min” also means gift.
Indigenous people viewed berries as gifts, yet dominant white culture tends to see them as commodities. How do we navigate this divide? There is no simple right or wrong answer. Nature is complicated. Relationships in nature are fluid and exist across a spectrum between mutualism and competition. Interactions between beings are in a constant state of flux. Every being is enmeshed in an intricate web within webs; boundaries blur, and life thrives amidst diversity.
This potent mix of layered diversity serves as a bulwark against scarcity and provides the impetus for seeing life as a grand mystery worthy of respect and gratitude.
As Robin notes, “There is no formula complex enough to hold the birthplace of stories.” Understanding our story requires human cultures to use all of our remarkable faculties. We have become overly dependent on the mechanistic process of science. This approach is powerful and has its place, but it is only one tool in our tool belt. Using all of our tools requires paying attention to other ways of knowing that manifest themselves when we open to our capacity for humility, empathy, intuition, spirit, and curiosity. Allowing these traits to inform technical inquiry is the sweet spot that leads to a more holistic way of being. It is a way of being capable of appreciating the names and functions of different creatures as well as being able to hear the songs that they sing.
One way to embrace this perspective is to reflect upon the Indigenous wisdom contained within their Honorable Harvest principles. Robin provides context and shares her view.
“If we think of the Earth as a big warehouse of commodities, as mere objects, we claim a kind of privilege to exploit what we believe that we own. … But in the worldview of land as gift where the givers are “someones” not “somethings,” consumers confront a moral dilemma. We humans must consume, since we are animals to whom the gift of photosynthesis was not given. But our patterns of gross overconsumption have brought us to the brink of disaster. What would it be like to consume with the full awareness that we are the recipients of earthly gifts, which we have not earned? To consume with humility? We are called to harvest honorably, with restraint, respect, reverence, and reciprocity.
The guidelines for the honorable harvest are not usually written down; they are reinforced in small acts of daily life. But if I were to list them, they would look something like this:
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you can take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for a life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first one. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift and reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you, and the Earth will last forever.”
These guiding principles are the foundation for gift economies that have existed far longer than our market economy. However, reflecting upon them often raises concerns. Aren’t people inherently selfish? What about the tragedy of the commons? We have to wade into murky, nuanced water to gain clarity. Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics for her work, demonstrating that it is possible to manage the commons cooperatively. She showed us that caring for the Earth and supporting economic development are not mutually exclusive. Embracing our mutual flourishing requires paying attention to detail, being part of a community, and suffusing your life with connections to something larger than yourself; in short, living a meaningful life.
Robin describes what is at stake and the importance of questioning our devotion to the market economy.
“Continued fealty to economies based on competition for manufactured scarcity, rather than cooperation around natural abundance, is now causing us to face the danger of producing real scarcity, evident in growing shortages of food and clean water, breathable air, and fertile soil. Climate change is a product of this extractive economy and is forcing us to confront the inevitable outcome of our consumptive lifestyle, genuine scarcity for which the market has no remedy. Indigenous story traditions are full of these cautionary teachings. When the gift is dishonored, the outcome is always material and spiritual. Disrespect the water, and the springs dry up. Waste the corn, and the garden grows barren. Regenerative economies that cherish and reciprocate the gift are the only path forward. To replenish the possibility of mutual flourishing, for birds and berries and people, we need an economy that shares the gifts of the Earth, following the lead of our oldest teachers, the plants.”
Plants have much to teach us about mutualism. Even in the relationship between a single mycorhizal fungus and a single plant, there is a fluid give-and-take rather than a rigid dichotomy. Researchers describe a mutualism-to-parasitism continuum that makes it hard to discern where one organism ends and another begins.
“There is symbiosis at every single level of living things, and you cannot compete in a zero-sum game with creatures upon whom your existence depends.”
-Richard Powers
The relevant question for us is: Are enough people capable of appreciating this nuanced perspective so that we can align ourselves with life?
Planting Serviceberries is a good way to find out. This simple act is a gift to nature and to yourself. You can actively participate in improving the world. Some may object that this is too small a task and they may ask: How will this have any impact in the world? Robin replies, “ I’m not sure that’s the right question. Why does everything have to be expanded? It is the small scale in context that makes the flow of gifts meaningful. If gift economies are to have an impact, I’m willing to think about what that might look like on a community scale.”
We can commune with the birds. When you see that first flock of Cedar Waxwings alight amidst Serviceberries that you have nurtured, and when you revel in their abundance, you will feel more connected and alive with every berry the birds eat. The life welling up within you will be a guiding force in the world.
If you allow yourself to pull on this thread, you will be held in a web within webs and know without doubt that it is our birthright to live in an abundant world.
To be held
by the light
was what I wanted,
to be a tree drinking the rain,
no longer parched in this hot land.
To be roots in a tunnel growing
but also to be sheltering the inborn leaves
and the green slide of mineral
down the immense distances
into infinite comfort
and the land here, only clay,
still contains and consumes
the thirsty need
the way a tree always shelters the unborn life
waiting for the healing
after the storm
which has been our life.
Linda Hogan, To be Held
I have six Serviceberries planted in my yard. This spring, I am forgoing my normally patient approach to starting plants, and I plan to plant a large Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry in a prominent, sunny location near our pond. This cultivar won a recent taste test that we held at one of the Savanna Institute demonstration farms in northern Illinois. There are many nurseries online where you can order Serviceberry plants. Just search for “Serviceberry plants for sale.”
This informative link describes all 9 species of Serviceberry.
https://www.thespruce.com/nine-species-serviceberry-trees-and-shrubs-3269674
Yes! Let’s see life as a grand mystery worthy of respect and gratitude. We call the serviceberry shadbush because it flowers when the shad and herring migrate up the river. I leave the berries for the wildlife because they are mostly pits with little fruit. Preparing the fruit is much work for me. Watching wildlife is more gratifying; we receive a different form of nourishment.
Here, cedar waxwings prefer the hawthorn berries. We should not view one plant as better than another. The firmly held belief, competition in nature, is a British construct that harks back to their days of empire. Russian Prince Kropotkin, the great naturalist dismissed as an anarchist, put the question to rest long ago. Animals that cooperate are more fit for survival than those that compete.
Diversity, cooperation, and symbiosis are much more than bulwarks against scarcity; they enable organisms, populations, and ecosystems to flourish and heal the Earth.
Planted a serviceberry in October. Black chokeberry and nannyberry too. They're for the birds, but after reading this post and learning of the deliciousness of serviceberries, they're going to have to share a little of that fruit with us