A few years ago I discovered a book called "Eat to Live" by Joel Fuhrman, and among the other things I learned, one of the most impactful was this:
At the time, I thought "Wow, and I have a whole blackberry bush down the hill, all I have to do is pick them!" So as I sit here on this mid-September evening, motivating myself to get up early and pick what is likely one of the last pickings of the season, I decided to write about it.
One of my earliest childhood memories is picking blackberries from "Hazel's bush". Hazel was my great-aunt, and owned most of the property around us. She generously gave my parents a portion of the property that we all grew up on, so many of my childhood memories are entwined with Hazel and the experiences gained by trespassing on her property (usually with permission!). For some reason, blackberries don't grow so wildly in Bailey Flats where I grew up as they do here in Sonoma County, so it was a special privilege to be allowed to pick them on her property. Likely they were growing at the bottom of her pasture because the water drained there from her backyard pond and fountain. It wasn't the most pleasant of memories, likely because I was little and the bush was big, and we weren't smart enough to pick in the early morning, so it was HOT!
My siblings tell stories of picking them along Mariposa Creek, the cleverest of them picking from the water, which allows one to obtain berries not already scavenged by others and stay cool while doing so. I never got in on that activity but that might have been an improvement on the childhood blackberry memories.
Most of the berries I ate growing up were boysenberries, grown in long rows in the garden at the Ranch. I never learned where the starts were obtained, unlike the grape vines which my father readily admitted came from "acquired" cuttings on his many trips to Fresno.
Before we moved to this property, Rick and I would go out early on weekend mornings to the backroads of Sonoma County and pick berries, but now that we have our own, there is really no excuse for not having this healthy food readily available.
Over the years, I have learned a bit about picking and storing blackberries, so let's start with that. I learned from my sister Liz that you can pick more efficiently if both hands are free, so I copied her "turn a milk jug into a bucket" idea and used an old laptop strap to hang it around my neck with a minimum of discomfort. Usually, I pick in that, and then once it's full, dump it into a box lined with green berry baskets. For the months of July and August, I can usually pick 2 gallons in about an hour if I'm working fast.
I almost always pick in the early morning, mostly because it's really miserable to do it in the heat. In Petaluma, we often have fog in the mornings, so I try to get down the hill first thing and pick until I've done the whole bush or it gets hot, whichever comes first.
I used to have to pick on weekends, so I would get down there only once a week, but now that I'm retired I can pick multiple times per week. All in all, there are really no excuses to not have a freezer full of berries by now!
I have "berry picking clothes", really just long pants and a long sleeved shirt, but I get aggressive when picking and really wade into the bush, so they often get stained and I try to use the same ones each time. I also have an old pair of tennis shoes that I reserve for berry picking for the same reason.
I have also found that it's REALLY helpful to take a pair of gloves and clippers down and trim back the canes that hang in front of the berries or "grab me" as I lean into the bush. If I take the time to do that, it greatly increases my efficiency and yield. If I need more motivation I now have a friend with goats, and they LOVE blackberry vines, and in return she gives me goat manure and used straw. Since she uses organic straw and doesn't feed her goats anything except natural products, I feel good about using it in my compost and have gotten great results!
In case you're wondering, I don't typically use gloves when I pick berries. I tried using my garden gloves but they don't enable me to "feel" the berries well enough to pick. Rubber gloves get snagged on the thorns. One of the tips I do want to pass along is to take one thorn-proof glove and use it to pick up the branch of berries. There might be one or two on top, but often there are 5-6 down below. An easy way to quadruple your berry haul! I have a friend that comes and picks my bush with a friend of hers, and I see them go down there with a cane. I have never seen it in action so clearly I have more to learn on the berry picking front.
I usually store a small bowl in the fridge to eat fresh, but don't wash them until we're ready to eat them. When berries are dead ripe they don't last long, only a day or two, before starting to mold. I think that's why you don't see them offered for sale very often, by the time you transport them they are leaking juice everywhere and starting to go.
Most of the time, I pick and freeze all summer long. I was taught by my Mom to wash them, then after letting them "drip dry" for a bit, to spread them in a single layer. I use "jelly roll pans" for that (the kind of cookies sheets with a lip), since they contain the berries better than the "airbake" cookie sheets I use to bake cookies. The reason to freeze them in a single layer is that you can bag them and store them for use in whatever quantities you need, vs. if you froze them in a lump you would have to thaw out the whole batch.
Typically, I fill up a whole freezer shelf with berries before the season is over. This year I've made jam several times already to share with eager jam lovers, but most years I also get together with my friend Randy and pool our fruit and make many batches of jam over the course of a weekend. We started doing this when she lived in Petaluma and had Concord grapes. But after she retired and moved to Brownsville, we no longer have her grape crop. We BOTH have blackberries so usually end up with many batches, along with any other fruit we've acquired (pears, peaches, strawberries, plums, etc.). To learn more about making jam, you can read this popular blog from a few years back, and if you want to start doing it yourself, this blog has a list of supplies.
I will say that I've learned a lot over the course of our many years making jam. For instance, jam jars are EXPENSIVE so I look for them at garage sales or thrift stores. I also have learned that once people know you make jam, they often return the jars. In case you're wondering, yes, the ring part of the lids can be re-used, so it's useful to keep and return that, but the flat part needs to be replaced each time you use it, so you can discard that. My biggest score has been at estate sales where the heirs don't know what to do with all the canning supplies and will often offload all of them. I have also inherited canning supplies from friends and neighbors who are giving up their canning efforts.
I have also learned not to leave it too late in the season to buy canning supplies, since the stores that sell them sometimes only stock them seasonally. Oyear I was in a panic going from store to store searching for pectin. You don't always get a good price going online, so I've started planning ahead, since Randy and I often don't get together until November which is past prime canning season.
This year I scheduled two other jam-making sessions, one with my mentee, Gabby (because her Grandma asked if I had any more jam and I wanted her to experience the whole process, from picking in the afternoon heat to making jam over a hot stove). She did great!
The other was with my friend Jennifer. Jennifer and I worked together over 30 years ago at FICO, and after retirement we reconnected through volunteering for Una Vida. She mentioned she liked my jam, so I invited her and her daughter to come pick and learn how to make jam. On a recent Saturday they did just that, and we made two huge batches. I sent her home with enough to last awhile!
In addition to jam, the other favorite way to use up berries is in pie! I grew up making pie for my Dad, so I am well-practiced. If you want to learn about making pies, this blog captures much of my experience.
I would be remiss if I didn't talk about blackberry milkshakes. These are my husband's absolutely favorite milkshake flavor, and it's rare to find it on any menu (probably because blackberries are hard to come by). We did find them at the Burger Barn in Dunsmuir on our way to Shasta, SO GOOD. Almost worth the trip just for that. One year I actually canned little jars of blackberry compote - with the idea that they would just hit the spot later in the year after blackberry season - to combine with vanilla ice cream and use our old-fashioned milkshake maker. Is it any wonder I have a cholesterol problem?
Speaking of blackberry compote, that is my favorite way to get the goodness of blackberries shipped across the country to my daughter Katelyn. She LOVES blackberries, but of course I can't ship them fresh, so I cook them up and can them just plain (no pectin, no sugar), wrap them up well, and ship them to her. She enjoys them throughout the year, usually on yogurt for breakfast. Canned boysenberries are one of the many things that my Mom would pull out of the basement in the dead of winter. Yum!
One more funny blackberry story related to Katelyn. On her last trip home she requested blackberries since they were just coming into season. She often doesn't eat on flights, and given she misses the great fruit in California we have a tradition of picking up seasonal fruits when we meet her at the airport. It happened she was arriving late morning on the same day that we have a Young Woman's Club event at the Petaluma Woman's Club. We planned to "make your own pizza", so I needed to make pizza dough and sauce before leaving for the airport. I was so proud of my great crop of garlic this year that I decided to make pesto from it and the plentiful basil. The pizza sauce recipe (see this blog if you're getting inspired) calls for a WHOLE HEAD of garlic, so I sliced each clove, plus processed more for pesto. Then I went down the hill and picked berries. You can see where this is going, right? Despite washing my hands multiple times, I guess the garlic was still on my hands when I picked berries. I sent Katelyn this photo to entice her with the great blackberries I was bringing her, but shortly after she started eating them, she said "hmmm, these taste like garlic". We laughed and laughed.
If I need more motivation to pick while the pickin' is good, one of my favorite uses for blackberries was as party favors for my son and daughter-in-law's baby shower two years ago. Since Austin was born at the end of August, her shower at the end of July was smack dab in the middle of berry season. I made up a batch and bought a bunch of the 4 oz. jars, we put custom labels on them, and wa-la, custom party favors! That's where I got the idea for the title of this blog, since we wrote "Thanks Berry Much" for coming to the shower on the label. Ah, good times. You never know when you might need more party favors!
One more piece of learning to add to my blackberry experience. Last year I was gifted a number of thornless blackberry canes. After storing them in water for a couple of months(!), I cleared out a space for them in my backyard. About half of them survived - which is a miracle since I waited so long to plant them - and I was happy to try them and learned they are quite good. I had heard from several sources that the taste wasn't nearly as good as the thorny kind, but I'm quite happy that I dedicated space to them. One bonus: my grandson loves to help me in the yard and he can reach these and pick them without me being worried about his first experience with blackberries scarring him for life (literally!). It will be interesting to see how the canes develop over the years since they are planted in quite a narrow bed. Of course, I have flowers growing nearby so we'll see about "survival of the fittest"!
As I usually do when I write a blog, I had to do a bit of learning. One of the things I've always been curious about is what type of blackberries we have here in Sonoma County. A bit of googling led me to this blog, which not only answers that question, but is also another source of information about canning, including natural sources of pectin! Turns out I have Himalayan berries, which are the taller growing, brambly thicket blackberries and are non-native. Invasive, I knew!
Well, now I'm getting hungry so I better wrap this up. One last piece of motivation, stolen from a facebook post by my sister Fran (Thanks to her friend Mike Houston.)
Blackberries have been used by women in labor to help relieve labor pain as they have high levels of vitamin K, which can act as a muscle relaxant.
There are around 375 species of blackberry, which are found in almost all parts of the world.
The Greeks used the blackberry as a remedy for gout, and the Romans made a tea from the leaves of the blackberry plant to treat various illnesses.
Blackberries contain copper, which is essential for bone metabolism. It’s also essential to the production of white and red blood cells in the body. The very dark color of blackberries is evidence of the high antioxidant levels contained in the fruit.
Bees that feed on blackberry blossoms produce a dark-colored, fruit-flavored honey.
Other names for blackberries include lawers, thimbleberries, dewberries and brambleberries.
The dark blue colour ensures blackberries have one of the highest antioxidant levels of all fruits. Antioxidants, well-known for lowering the risk of a number of cancers, are a huge bonus, but be aware the berries are best consumed in their natural state to get the full benefits. (Lamar's note: I guess that lets out the jam, pie and milkshakes!)
If a blackberry plant has turned orange, destroy it. This is a serious fungal disease that cannot be cured.
Consumption of blackberries can help to promote the healthy tightening of tissue, which is a great non-surgical procedure to make skin look younger.
Prolonged consumption of blackberries also helps keeps your brain alert, thereby maintaining clarity of thought and good memory.
I'll see you bright and early!
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