Watch the Video: Don't Eat the Berries
Here it is, straight from Patrick's own channel, The Patrick LabyorSheaux. It runs 2 minutes and 38 seconds, so it costs you less time than waiting for toast to pop. Press play, watch the whole thing, and then come back, because a story like this one lands better when you hear it in Patrick's own voice first — especially the part where he realises what he has been eating.
Video: Don't Eat the Berries on YouTube — embedded from the creator's own show.
Every kid actor gets hungry on set. Most of them learn to wait for lunch. Patrick Labyorteaux did not. As a boy on Little House on the Prairie, he loved food, and when a scene put a bush full of berries in front of him, he did the most natural thing in the world: he ate them. Then he ate some more. Then, between takes, he ate a few more, just in case. The only problem was that nobody had told him the berries were not really growing there.
What Happens in the Clip
Patrick opens by saying this is his favourite episode of Little House on the Prairie, and it is easy to see why. The episode is called "Men Will Be Boys," and it stars Patrick as Andy Garvey alongside his real-life brother Matthew Labyorteaux, who played Albert, with Michael Landon and Merlin Olsen in the cast. It was filmed in Sonora, California, and the story is a classic boyhood adventure: Albert and Andy catch a rabbit, but they cannot bring themselves to kill it, so they are still hungry — and then they find a berry bush.
On screen, the boys eat the berries and pack more away for the road. Off screen, Patrick was doing exactly the same thing, only for real. He kept eating the berries during the scene, and he kept eating them between takes, too. The prop master kept asking him to stop. Patrick kept not stopping. If you have ever been a hungry kid in front of food you were told not to touch, you already know how this goes. The adult says stop, the kid nods, and the kid eats one more anyway.
That is the whole clip, really, and it is charming because Patrick tells it on himself. He is not blaming anyone. He is not pretending he was a perfect little professional. He was a hungry kid, the berries were right there, and the prop master was fighting a losing battle. What makes it a great story, though, is the twist at the end — the part Patrick clearly did not know at the time, and the part that turns a funny anecdote into a proper Hollywood story.
The Punchline: The Berries Were Handmade
Here is the twist, and it is worth waiting for the clip to deliver it in Patrick's own timing. There was no berry bush growing in that forest. The crew had stayed up until 4 in the morning sewing berries onto a bush by hand, one by one, so that it would look right on camera. It was overnight, painstaking, invisible work — the kind of work nobody in the audience is ever supposed to notice.
And Patrick ate it. Take after take, snack after snack, he was quietly undoing a whole night of somebody else's handiwork. That is why the prop master kept asking him to stop, and that is why the story still makes Patrick laugh now. It is not a story about a diva or a disaster. It is a story about how television really gets made: a crew working through the night to build something fake that looks real, and a kid who thought it was lunch.
It also explains why the title works so well. "Don't Eat the Berries" sounds like a joke, and it is — but on a film set, it was also a genuine instruction, given more than once, to a boy who really loved eating. Patrick ends the clip by teasing more stories in the same vein, about props and food on set, and by pointing viewers to the Love Boat cruise he is promoting for February. If the berries story is anything to go by, those follow-ups are worth waiting for.
The Extra Story: What "Men Will Be Boys" Was Really About
Here is the extra story, and it puts the berry scene in its proper place. "Men Will Be Boys" is Season 5, Episode 10 of Little House on the Prairie, first aired on November 13, 1978, according to the episode guide listed on IMDb. The episode is not really about berries at all. It is about two boys trying to prove they are men.
The setup is simple and very Little House. Albert and Andy set off to prove their mettle by living by their wits on a week-long, overland walk from Walnut Grove to Sleepy Eye and back. What the boys do not know is that their fathers are secretly trailing them the whole way, watching over the adventure they think they are having on their own. The rabbit, the hunger, and the berry bush all sit inside that bigger story: two kids, out on their own for the first time, learning that being a man is harder — and hungrier — than it looks.
That context is what makes Patrick's story land. The berry scene was never meant to be the point of the episode. It was a small, human beat inside a story about growing up: boys who cannot kill a rabbit, boys who are still hungry, boys who find something sweet in the woods. The audience was supposed to notice the adventure. Instead, thanks to one hungry kid actor, the behind-the-scenes story became almost as memorable as the episode itself. And it fits a pattern in Patrick's work that fans of this site will recognise. The Catherine Bell casting story is the same kind of tale — a small, true, human moment from inside a famous show, told by a man who was actually there.
Why Patrick Is the Right Man to Tell It
Patrick played Andy Garvey on Little House on the Prairie from 1977 to 1981, so this is not a story he heard secondhand. He was the kid in the scene, and he is now the grown man laughing at himself for eating the set. That is the whole appeal of his short videos. There is no panel, no interviewer steering him, no ten-minute setup. It is just Patrick, telling you something that actually happened in the business, the way an old friend tells a story across a table.
Today he hosts his own show, The Patrick LabyorSheaux, and he runs Working Actors School, which teaches actors what it is really like on a set, in a way that is practical and fun instead of scary. A story like the berries is a perfect lesson in disguise: respect the props, because somebody stayed up all night making them, and if you are hungry, wait for lunch. It is also a reminder of why his clips travel so well with classic TV fans. If you want another short, true story in the same spirit, the best Hollywood story ever clip runs just 2 minutes and 45 seconds and lands the same way, and the 98-second Hollywood Brunch clip is even shorter.
That is the whole point of this page. Some stories need room, and some just need a man who was there, telling it straight, in under three minutes. This one earns its title, and the 4 a.m. sewing crew deserve a round of applause they never got on screen. Watch it, send it to the friend who still quotes Little House, and come back for the next video. And if you want the long version of Patrick at his best, the full Barbara Crampton conversation is another actor telling her own story, from carnival kid to scream queen to producer, while the full Ike Eisenmann conversation is two old friends talking until the real stories come out.
