I took the toddler raspberry picking this morning, at a little family farm alarmingly close to the train tracks.

It took him a few minutes to get the gist of it — to figure out how to grasp and pull, and to only choose dark red raspberries, not green ones — but he figured it out eventually. He also liked taking the berries I picked and putting them in our container by himself.

“This one issa ready,” he’d say, picking his way down the line, choosing berries of varying redness.

We didn’t spend too much time there. I don’t have time to process a million raspberries within a day or two anyway, so we got maybe a few pints’ worth for $2. After we paid, the toddler insisted on pulling a raspberry out of the bucket. “My raspberry,” he said with authority, taking a gentle taste without actually biting it.

He hasn’t eaten one yet, but he’s very protective of his raspberry.