“Lifecycle of Strawberries” by Michelle Graabek Wallace

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Seed Planting

I was seven when we moved to the Danish countryside. In my youthful idealism I'd always wanted to live on a farm. Golden wheat fields that belonged to our neighbor stretched out as far as the eye could see beyond the back of our house. We had a dilapidated barn that had a loft full of hay. The mouse population was held back by the two barn cats that came with the farm. We turned what had once upon a time been a chicken coop into a rabbit run for our mostly feral pet rabbits, Sugar and Spice. I saw the land as a place to frolic and pick infinite dandelions that my mother complained stained all my clothes. My mother saw the land and saw potential for growth. "There is a reason", my mother said, "that God gave Adam a garden." So, like God with Adam, my sister and I were placed in the garden and made to tend it.

Germination

There was a rhubarb plant that was already growing half wild in one corner when we moved in. But my dad had some childhood trauma being made to eat rhubarb and gleefully mowed down the rhubarb to sad little stumps every year with the lawnmower. So, my mother ignored that one. In another corner, at one end of the dilapidated barn, was a somewhat less dilapidated wooden playhouse, which my sister and I would use as a base for our games, though we rarely spent much time inside it as it was rather overrun by spiders, and one year the wasps made a nest in the gable. It was next to the playhouse, across from the chicken coop turned rabbit run, that my mother worked with us to clear a piece of land and declared it the strawberry field.

Sprout

We grew many things on our little farm, potatoes, zucchini, beans, etc. But I remember the strawberries best, in part because in my memory they were the most backbreaking work. We planted the strawberries in neat rows. In spring it was my sister and I's job to weed between the rows in the ground that seemed to me much too fertile for its own good and had grown a great deal of things it clearly shouldn't. Backbreaking weeding takes up a large part of my memory of the strawberry field. My sister probably remembers it differently, but naturally I remember doing the lion’s share of the work compared to her. I mostly remember that one summer she ripped at least three pairs of jeans climbing over the fence into the pig sty, while I complained that she wasn't helping with the weeding, and my mother complained that jeans didn't grow on trees. 

Seedling

"It builds character." my mother would say when I whined about weeding the strawberries. I wondered whether Adam had had to do any weeding in the Garden of Eden, or whether that was a garden that was perfectly well-behaved. No wasps in the gable of the playhouse, no jeans to tear on fences, no weeding the neat lines of strawberry fields. I wonder whether after the casting out of the garden he ever felt like complaining about the backbreaking work, and the freaking dandelions that turned up where they shouldn't, and perhaps God whispered upon the wind, “it builds character”.

Flowering

After the weeding, we’d put straw under the strawberries. We had plenty of straw in the hayloft from the once upon a time it was a working farm. My dad would chuck them down, and then we’d get to work. The straw both choked the weeds and would hold the strawberries off the ground so they wouldn’t rot. We stuffed the straw under bright green leaves and trailing strawberry runners. Can I liken Christ unto straw, still leaving the hard work of growth to me, but lifting the heads and the hands that hang down? As summer advances the strawberries bloom with pink and white. My sister and I run circles around the garden throwing water balloons, the air full of shrieks of laughter. We too are in bloom.

Fruit

Denmark is a flat landscape, with ample rainfall, and fertile soils, ideal for agricultural growth: both of strawberries and blonde, barefooted girls. The fields behind our house grow golden. My blonde curls go even lighter under long days in the sun. The strawberry's pink and white petals turn into juicy red berries. This is the easiest part. Picking them hardly feels like a chore. Somehow there always seems to be enough to fill our mouths, fill our baskets, and fill our deep freezer with multiple gallon sized Ziploc bags full. I trade a basket of our homegrown strawberries for eggs with one of our neighbors. By the sweat of our brows, my sister and I eat bowls full of strawberries with sugar and creamy lemon buttermilk and it tastes like summer. I wonder if to Adam his harvests tasted this sweet, and God looked down smiling and said, “it is good”.

This piece was published in 2025 as part of the 14th Annual Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.