What Mulberry Season Reminds Me About Legacy

Jun 18 2026 | By: Woller Photography

Sunlight shining through green leaves with ripe mulberries on a vine in southern Minnesota

Mulberries are delicious, invasive, and make me highly sentimental.

There is something so rewarding about gathering produce outside, especially if you haven’t had to do anything to make it grow.

It is mulberry season here in the Midwest. For my kids, mulberry season usually means avoiding the trees altogether. They have never been the biggest fans of picking the tiny berries. Me, on the other hand, I absolutely love it.

In years past, I have been sad when I was too busy working or directing VBS to stop and gather multiple buckets and instead only caught the tail end of the harvest. To my recollection, I have not missed it completely since we moved to our farm in 2013.

That summer, while we were fixing up the house, it was great fun for the kids to gather and eat berries right off the limited number of trees we had. The following summer, I even took them to a local park to gather as many as possible because we barely had any trees of our own.

Times have changed in thirteen years.

 

Now, thanks to birds (and perhaps dogs) doing their part to spread the seeds, mulberries grow here like weeds. In fact, this spring Eric cut down more than a dozen volunteer trees in our garden area alone. They grow fast around here.

Today I was sitting on the deck working through emails, trying to at least soak up some sunshine while I worked. As I looked across the yard, I noticed the ground beneath the trees covered in fallen berries. Before long, I had closed the computer, grabbed a bucket, and headed out to gather.

We have two trees that produce huge berries. Most of the others still have small ones, but that does not stop me from picking from every tree I can find. Without the help of my kids I stuck to what I could reach and didn't haul a ladder, but I was still able to find plenty. 

There is something deeply satisfying about walking around the property gathering food that God has provided. Maybe it comes from growing up on a farm, but I have always loved the idea of being connected to the land in that way. It is not that I do not love my jobs—I truly do—but if I could make a living entirely off the land, I would retire in a heartbeat.

The first fall we lived here, I dove right into that world. It was incredibly rewarding to make jelly and desserts from wild grapes, mulberries, and black raspberries. The next fall, we had garden produce and a large crop of apples, and I learned how to can food. I loved every minute of it. 
Mulberry picking hand holding ripe red and black fruit on a leafy branch

God created the trees to hide the berries from predators well. They typically hide below the leaves.

woman holding a container of mulberries on her farm. She is surrounded by trees and a cornfield.

I filled the container much more than this-and hopefully also left that bug outside.

Hand holding a white bowl of dark berries over green grass

Mulberries are absolutely messy. They would make good textile dye, so be careful to not do that accidentally if you pick your own.

The years that followed looked different. As the kids grew up, my photography business grew alongside them. Between teaching, running a business, and shuttling four children to countless activities, there was simply less time to devote to gardening, canning, and the many other projects that come with farm life.

Of course, there is another challenge. The busiest seasons on a farm are also often the busiest seasons for photographers and college professors.

Spring planting arrives just as the semester is wrapping up, graduation season begins, family sessions for graduating seniors fill the calendar, and new senior portrait inquiries start flooding in. Summer brings gardens, berries, and long days outdoors, but it is also peak senior portrait season in Minnesota. Then fall harvest overlaps with the start of a new academic year and the final rush of senior portraits before winter arrives. It is also the season when I am most often documenting harvest on other farms through my agricultural documentary photography work. There is something special about spending my days photographing combines and grain carts while my own projects wait at home. I may not always be harvesting my own crops, but I am still blessed to be in the fields preserving the stories of farmers and rural families.

I honestly live in three worlds that all run on the same calendar.

Too often, the screen wins. Between teaching and photography, I would guess that 80 percent of my work happens on a computer. Not exactly ideal for someone who would rather be outside.

That is probably why these little moments feel so meaningful. Gathering a bucket of mulberries is not really about the berries. It is about stepping away from the screen for a little while and reconnecting with the parts of myself that grew up on a farm. It is about remembering that while I love serving my clients and teaching my students, I also love dirt under my fingernails, sunshine on my face, and the simple satisfaction of bringing food home to my family.

That is why I still make time for mulberries every year. No matter how busy life gets, they remind me of the mulberry tree on our farm in South Dakota where my grandma and mom would take my brother and me to gather berries. They remind me of taking my own children out to pick from our trees, even if there was usually at least a little grumbling involved.

The berries themselves never last very long, but the memories somehow do, and that is why I will keep grabbing a bucket every June.

 

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