Here in the Pacific Northwest, wild blackberries grow like weeds. In fact, they are weeds. Just try getting rid of a patch and you’ll find that it’s no easy feat. The plants line roadways and forest paths. In August, the berries grow large and deep purple, and it’s common to see people out with their buckets in parks and along the roadside picking berries.
I flatter myself, but I feel that I am a blackberry picker of considerable skill. And make no mistake, there is skill involved. The bushes have large, barbed thorns. If you aren’t careful, you can get badly scratched up. As a child, I got my finger caught on a thorn that I couldn’t get out. Not. Fun. There is an art to blackberry picking. As I perfected it, I have learned some life lessons.
Blackberries on the roadside in Birch Bay, Washington
Blackberry picking has taught me never to pay grocery store prices for something that grows wild, free and abundant. Why would I pay for flavourless, days-old berries, when I can pick and eat them fresh not 2 blocks from my door? And yet, blackberry picking has also taught me that you can’t get something for nothing. While I don’t have to pay to pick, I do have to invest effort and risk danger.
Blackberries on the vine
Blackberry picking has honed my eye, until I have become very adept at spotting the best berries in a tangle of thorns and leaves. It has taught me to look where other people don’t – down low and up high and in hard-to-reach places. And it has taught me to think ahead by dressing for the task and planning my approach. While a few scratches are par for the course in berry-picking, there’s no need to deliberately court them.
The reward – a bucket of berries
At least once on every outing I find myself snagged on some vines and stuck. And when that happens, I’ve learned how to get myself out with minimal damage. Blackberries have taught me to be slow and deliberate. They have taught me, above all, not to panic. And they have taught me that a little bit of risk is worth the reward.
A jar of homemade jam, so that I can enjoy blackberries all year long
Blackberries reinforce life’s transience. Blackberry season lasts a few weeks at most, and then it’s over. There’s no dilly-dallying if you want to enjoy your share. And when you have a bucket full of berries, you need to act fast because they won’t be that good for long. Make hay while the sun shines, and all that jazz, or your harvest will spoil before you can enjoy it.
Me being me, of course I had to make blackberry ice cream
I love picking wild berries. It feels like a part of my heritage, a piece of my childhood. I feel confident and at ease in a way that I don’t feel when I’m inside working on a computer. I love it. I hope that one day my children, too, will feel that way. That they will learn their own lessons from the blackberries.
Do you ever pick your own berries? What sorts of things have you learned in the process?
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We got to pick berries and make jam and crumble while we were visiting my family in Ireland. Here in Tucson I have no such luck, berry picking is reserved for Granny’s house for my little girl, which makes me sad. However, there are always mesquite pods to pick in Tucson at this time of year, and mesquite waffles with maple pecan ice-cream are amazing. I even have an ice-cream picture today.
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I grew up with berries in my yard. We had mostly blueberries, but we did have a few blackberries and raspberries. Yup… they are very thorny! Over the years my father cleared out more land so the blackberries are gone. But they still have the blueberries. I’m sure the birds are enjoying them more now that I don’t live there anymore.
I hope to go berry picking next year. My son LOVES blackberries, although I’m not sure how well he’ll enjoy picking them. Maybe strawberries. We’ll see.
Your ice cream looks SO yummy!!! Was it just as good as it looks? I would need to and some jimmies (sprinkles) to my bowl though. MMMMmmmm! It’s still breakfast time here and I could go for a bowl right now. THANKS!
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Twitter: AmberStrocel
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I would say it’s as good as it looks. But I’ve never met a bowl of ice cream I didn’t like.
Twitter: kellynaturally
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Your posts always leave me longing for a visit to the west coast.
When we lived up in Maine, we had wild concord grapes and wild raspberry bushes that grew in our woods – right above our stream – so just barely out of reach… yet so worthwhile to figure out how to get to them.
I miss that.
kelly @kellynaturally’s last post … Nightwaking and Nightweaning
That’s how I feel picking Blueberries. It’s like I was made to do it. I’m fast, efficient, and get the best berries (those are always high up or down low!) When I’m in the zone, I feel that I could do that forever. I start dreaming of owning my own blueberry farm. I think, “I can handle this!” It all just clicks. Then reality and my screaming child break in and it’s back to the air conditioned van and other tasks of the day.
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Great post Amber! I too grew up in PNW and blackberries brings back the memories
I’ve never tried home-made blackberry ice cream…just sharing that with you
Twitter: Wendy_Irene
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I love the lessons blackberries have taught you. What a great post! I adore blackberries but have not picked many. That blackberry ice cream looks like the perfect reward. I think it is time to start learning!
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I love berry picking everywhere I go…. just ask friends and family.
Salmonberries, thimbleberries, saskatoon berries, wild strawberries, gooseberries, wild raspberries, huckleberries and (most abundantly) the blackberry! I also enjoy wild grasses, rose petals, and other forest munchies as I walk.
I made oregon grape syrup one time… not all that great to be honest, but I had to try!
Thank you for sharing your lessons, I love the technique and patience that a successful blackberry expedition takes too! I usually come home, wash them and then lay them out on a fine-screened cooling rack in the freezer right away. Once they are frozen solid, I properly package them. It preserves the freshness for all-year use, and keeps them easy to handle.
** BTW the icecream and jam look scrumptious!
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Us New Englanders feel this way about our blueberries….except there aren’t thorns.
Twitter: fuoriborgo
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Wonderful post Amber! We have tree-sized mean and thorny blackberry bushes bearing very few berries – sad metaphors for this country. On a happier note, I’ve been perfecting ice cream making:)
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Twitter: MarilynBelsham
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We have a solitary blackberry…stick? (since it’s not really a bush) in our yard that we’ve been trying to kill for 4 years. It will not die.
I love blackberries but I do hate picking them. It may be another reason that I had kids. I wonder at what age it’s considered safe to send them into the patches out pack and pick their Ma some berries.
I once went picking with my husband and started to pick the low to the ground ones. He FREAKED OUT. He has flat out forbidden my to pick the low berries. He’s worries a creature would have peed on them or nibbled them. In fact it’s one of his main rules in life. Don’t Pick the Low Berries. He’s already taught my son that.
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Twitter: AmberStrocel
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I’ve considered that, but I think the risk of pee is low with blackberries in particular. They’re so thorny, I’m not sure any animal would be dumb enough to lift leg on a patch. Certainly not more than once, or twice at the outside.
Will he eat strawberries? Those are ALWAYS low to the ground.
Twitter: Wendy_Irene
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This comment is hilarious! I really enjoyed it
Wow, that ice cream! We go raspberry picking every year and I grew up with blackberry bushes but my son hates them (too seedy) so we haven’t gone picking.
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We pick our own when in Michigan. But here, living urbanely we do rely on the hand of farmers. Which is equally rewarding, with different reason.
Twitter: bitterindigo
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Why would you WANT to pull out blackberry vines? I can’t pick anything low to the ground (back issues). I’ve picked raspberries a few times here (Ottawa) and it was much easier than I remember from back home (Sudbury) — the bushes and berries were at a very comfortable height. I used to work at a frozen yogurt shop,, and all my favourites were purple
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Twitter: AmberStrocel
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You would want to pull them out because if you don’t, they will take over your entire yard. And sometimes you don’t want a bed of thorns in a space where kids play. But at the park? There, they rock.
Aw, I love this post! Just the other day I found myself positively overpowered by the smell of blackberries warmed by the sun…MMMMM. I’ve been trying to get organized to go picking but I have yet to sort out a way to entertain/restrain a toddler long enough to pick more than a handful! Any hints?
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Twitter: AmberStrocel
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Pretty much my only hint is to get someone else to entertain / restrain the toddler for you while you pick. I leave my 2-year-old at home with my husband. I can pick handfuls with him in tow, but he eats them all, and after a few minutes he’s lost interest.
Picking blueberries–the small, wild kind instead of the fat farmed ones I’m used to now, even when I do “pick them myself”–is one of my fondest memories of spending time with my mother growing up. I hope this isn’t tacky, but I’d like to link to an essay I wrote about it a while ago–gosh, five years now–that was published at Literary Mama. http://www.literarymama.com/creativenonfiction/archives/2005/02/blueberries-for-mom.html
PS this is a lovely post. I think one of the lessons I learned from berry picking…and that comes across in your post as well…is one of my mantras, “Anything worth doing is hard sometimes.”
Twitter: ladymrules
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The berries and jam look gorgeous! We lost a bunch of our CSA blackberries to spoilage,sadly. We just couldn’t get through the abundance of plums and berries fast enough, even with two little fruit monsters in the house!
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Sure enjoy your sharing and all of your lessons. You are right, blackberry picking is a learned skill with its own risks.
YUM. It’s pretty much all I can say.
I’m from Scotland and we used to pick Blackberries with our Grandparents. They lived near to an old railway line and we used to walk along and come home with big buckets to be made into jam and jellies.
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Twitter: karenednamunro
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You’re like my in-laws, in a good, blackberry-picking way… They pick big buckets full of berries every year, then my mother-in-law freezes them. It’s something of a family tradition to have old-fashioned Danish rice pudding at Christmas time, with blackberries (thawed from one of many packages in the freezer) on top. Another thing my m-i-l does is take a bottle of flavourless alcohol (she uses Aquavit, but you could probably use vodka), pours it into a decanter, and puts a whole lot of blackberries in there too. After a few weeks – presto, homemade blackberry liqueur!
Ohhh, yum! I think blackberries may be my favourite fruit, but they don’t seem to grow here in central Alberta. What we do have is lots and lots of raspberries–unfortunately, no wild ones, as far as I can tell, and I only have six bushed in my back yard–enough to have with cereal and yogurt for breakfast, but not enough for canning. However, you might have inspired me to go to a U-pick or the farmers’ market this week to stock up. Raspberry icecream… now that’s an idea!
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In the last week I have picked cherries, boysenberries, and wild huckleberries. The huckleberries were the ones to leave me the most pensive. They were the most delicious berries I have had all summer. They were also the smallest and took the most effort to gather. This had me thinking about a hunter gatherer lifestyle that was more dependent on the seasons and required a greater caloric intake to get those delicious berries. We are so spoiled these days when we eat gigantic strawberries way out of season. Of course they taste like cardboard, but it is just amazing we have them at all, and at such little expense.
Here are a few pictures from the huckleberry harvest in the rocky mountains this last weekend.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=209421&id=75310557084&saved#!/album.php?aid=209421&id=75310557084
And Amber, that ice cream looks to die for!