We were wondering how to harvest them, so thank you for your simple idea about the sheet on the ground.

What do you mean about "local snobbery about the mulberries". Do the locals appreciate them or look down on them as a nuisance?

the kids who are used to negotiating things on their own, the kids who have their own ideas and prefer freedom to sterile safety — those kids are going to be at a strong advantage.

naomi, i love that c.m. quote — thank you for sharing it!

i think your solution is a good one — giving them enough space to invent their own play. banding together with other families is a good move, too.

we have discussed here before the oddness of public wild places being hands-off — can’t pick the berries or collect the leaves, can’t climb trees or mush down grass to make a fort. it’s a conundrum — we need to be able to interact with the land we own.

After reading Last Child In the Woods, I find myself longing for those experiences for my children where they can find solitude outside of their room. This reminds me of something I recently read by Charlotte Mason...

But organised games are not play in the sense we have in view. Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make. They must be content to know that they do not understand, and, what is more, that they carry with them a chill breath of reality which sweeps away illusions.

My compromise, along with a group of other like-minded mothers so far has been to take the children into a patch of wilderness where they can play freely at a safe distance without our intrusion.

Funny how the kids ask us not to go back to places where Rangers or well-meaning Volunteers have told them not to touch, take, or re-arrange the nature.