If you drive past the farm right now you'll see a white ghost standing near the tree line. That's our poke patch, covered over, and there's a good reason for it.

Birds love poke berries. Mockingbirds, thrashers, cardinals, they all work the clusters as soon as the berries turn dark, and they don't wait for us. A cluster that's ripe today is stripped by tomorrow afternoon. The birds get fed, the seeds get spread all over the county, and we get nothing. That's the deal poke has been making with birds for a long time, and it's a fine deal for the plant. It just doesn't leave much for the farm.

So this year we covered the patch. What you're seeing in the photo is floating row cover, the same lightweight fabric we use elsewhere on the farm, draped over the plants and held on with tomato clips. Regular bird netting would do the same job, but the row cover is what we had on hand, and it works. It's loose enough that the plants keep growing and the clusters hang free. The birds can see the berries. They just can't reach them.

How the picking works

Poke berries don't ripen all at once. Each cluster carries green berries and ripe ones side by side, and the ripe ones are a deep purple-black you can't mistake. Carole reaches up under the cover and picks the dark ones a few at a time, leaving the green ones to finish. Gloves on, always. Poke juice stains everything it touches, and this is a plant we handle with care from start to finish.

Picking in stages means a slow, small harvest. A measuring cup at a time, not buckets. That's why our poke berries are a small-supply item. When the season's picking is done, that's what we have until next year.

A plant that demands respect

Poke is not a beginner plant, and we won't pretend otherwise. Every part of the pokeweed plant (Phytolacca americana) is toxic when handled wrong, and the old-timers who worked with it knew exactly what they were doing and did it the same way every time. It has a long history of traditional use here in the South, and that history comes with rules that were learned the hard way.

We sell the berries to folks who know that tradition. If that's not you, this is a plant to admire from the far side of the row cover, and there's no shame in that. Part of respecting these plants is knowing which ones ask more of you than others.

Our dried poke berries come from this covered patch, picked ripe by hand a few at a time. We also make a poke root extract from the same stand, dug and processed with the same care.

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.