Over the summer, I was picking raspberries with two friends of mine. I remarked about how I often travel the alleys in our city during the summer, picking berries from the various bushes behind garages and back yards. As I said this to them, I immediately thought about how I feel sort of anxious doing this quite natural activity. By mid-July, most of these bushes are literally loaded with raspberries and blackberries. A single, healthy bush produces enough berries for a family to snack on for several weeks. The abundance is sometimes mind blowing.
While most of these bushes are unattended to, and even completely forgotten to some extent, they constitute “private property.” When I stop and pick even a few berries, often there is an anxiety accompanying this act. I frequently look around and wonder about being perceived as stealing, never mind that the bulk of the berries end up dropping to the ground and are either eaten by animals or return to the soil untouched.
As a Buddhist, I have vowed to uphold the precept of not stealing. However, in a society so colonized and privatized, what is stealing?
I can rarely afford to purchase organic fruit, especially berries. They are outrageously expensive, even in conventional, big box supermarkets. In fact, even much of the pesticide covered “conventional” fruit is expensive and to some degree out of reach for poor and low income folks. At the same time, even in many urban areas, there are an abundance of fruit trees – especially in middle and upper class neighborhoods. While poor folks struggle to pay for a small bag of pesticide-ridden oranges that were picked weeks ago in someplace far off, middle and upper class folks not only can afford to purchase the organic fruit in the stores, but also often have fresh fruit right in their backyards for part of the summer at least.
I imagine a fair number of you might agree with the idea that wild fruit should be available to anyone who can pick it. But what about other human needs that have turned into products and services? What about ownership of land that was itself stolen from our indigenous friends and neighbors not so long ago? In this era of hyper privatization, a simple concept such as theft really isn’t all that simple.
Photo Credits
Raspberries – Wikimedia Creative Commons
Yes, you are stealing. Two wrongs dont make a right. How do you know they aren’t being cared for? Why dont you just find out who owns the property and ask? If they are too old to tend, why dont you volunteer to prune etc and pick for them in trade for part of the berries or grow your own. There are a lot of people in my area who have small growing areas and are forced to grow in the alleyways. I care for a university garden. It is huge and we have to water the whole thing by hand. It serves the university, but the caretakers planted a few berry bushes which is a really nice treat when we are out there every day watering by hand in 90 degree heat. In just 2 hours one evening, six people came by and picked berries right in front of me without even asking, and it was pretty obvious that I was out there dragging hoses around. This morning a lady came with a freaking bag. I was spraying. She seemed annoyed that I was interfering with her foraging on the backs of other people’s hard work. Maybe you live in the pacific northwest where there is enough rain for the incredibly high water needs of berries, but if not, you can bet someone is working hard to care for them.
On some uber high level, yes it is stealing. On a more realistic level, you are only taking a little of what will fall to the ground and rot, or be eaten by animals and insects. I do not think this is something anyone would post a complaint about.
Many people plant bushes and shrubs with high expectations of becoming a master jelly and jam maker when their shrubs yield fruit. What normally happens is the bushes are forgotten after the thrill wears off and reality of canning rears its ugly head.
I say press on, you are taking so little of what no one will miss. gl
Michael