Blackberries from the vine
I picked eleven pints of blackberries on Saturday morning. Well, maybe twelve — there’s no saying how many disappeared between the vine and the basket (though my purple-stained mouth offered a clue). Craig has a wonderful garden patch where he grows two kinds of blackberries — Navajo and Triple Crown — on thornless bushes. They start to ripen in late June and by mid-July are reaching their peak.
Berries in song
Berry-picking always makes me think of Linda Hirschhorn’s wonderful round, “The Berry Song,” which is both beautiful and wise.
Pick only berries that want to be picked (and other tips)
Here’s what I’ve learned about dealing with blackberries:
- Pick in the morning, before it gets too hot. This is for you and not about the berries. It’s just not as much fun to pick when both you and the berries are hot and sticky. Plus, all the stray crumbs of leaf and bug and berry will stick to your sweaty skin. ‘Nuff said.
- Only pick berries that want to be picked. As the song says, early fruit is bitter — or, more precisely, mouth-puckeringly sour — so don’t bother any berries that want to stay on the vine. Leave them for later and take only those that come off readily. Once you get a feel for it, you’ll notice that the ripe berries are very slightly softer than the unripe ones.
- Look high and low and over and under. Berries like to hide, and you’ll miss a lot if you don’t look carefully!
- Use small baskets. Blackberries are very fragile, and piling them up too high will squash the ones on the bottom.
- Take off your shoes before going back into the house. You may think you’ve been careful, but chances are you have some smooshed blackberry on your shoe — and you don’t want that on your rugs! (Zout! does an excellent job of getting berry stains off your clothes, by the way.) Also, don’t let the berries sit directly in a porcelain sink: their juice can leave grayish stains on the surface.
- If you’re just going to eat the berries, spread them out in a single layer on a paper towel and put them in the fridge. I don’t wash mine before storing them, because I know they’ll be eaten up very soon. But some suggest rinsing berries in a vinegar-water solution to prevent spoilage. I hear this works well, but I haven’t tried it.
- If you want to freeze your blackberries, this is what I suggest:
- Rinse the berries one basket at a time, making sure to get rid of any stray stems, leaves, or bugs.
- Then turn them onto paper towels and gently pat them dry.
- Next, place the clean, dry berries in a single layer on a rimmed cookie sheet or other flat pan (whatever will fit into your freezer). Don’t squeeze them in but leave a bit of space between.
- Place the pan of berries into the freezer and freeze till hard.
- Finally, package the frozen berries in plastic freezer bags and store them in the freezer until you’re ready to make a pie or some other scrumptious blackberry dessert. (You can find a link to my favorite blackberry pie recipe, below.)
Literary berries
I can’t leave the subject of berries without sharing one of my favorite quotes from Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping:
To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing — the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smoothes our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.
This was my email signature line for a long time, and I still find it a compelling statement of the power of desire and imagination and dreams. Lovely, no?
Here’s to ephemeral pleasures:
may we savor them while they last!
Connections
- The phrase purple-stained mouth comes from John Keats’ Ode to a Nightingale and of course has to do with wine and not with blackberries. Still, it’s an evocative phrase. Here’s a little more of that verse:
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
and purple-stained mouth…
- Listen to a snatch of The Berry Song by Linda Hirschhorn
- Food52: How to Keep Berries Fresh for Longer
- Marilynne Robinson: Housekeeping
- Recipe: Rustic blackberry pie
Credit: Craig took the blackberry photographs on this page.
9 thoughts on “Blackberries from the vine”
Your blog is a page full of sunburnt mirth! Thanks for your reminder of Keat’s miraculous jottings. I love all the information and photo’s and links. how do you have time to cull all of this and work too?
Thank you, Taya! I’m still trying to figure out how to have enough time for this project… For a couple of months, I spent every spare moment getting this site set up. Now the question is how to sustain it. Fingers crossed!
Jenny – I completely identify with having enough time due to blogging! Trying to get ahead of myself but failing badly…..
Bon courage, Liz! I’ve really enjoyed your posts so far and look forward to your next. Wishing you the best in getting more out there. (Check out Liz’s Trimley St Martin Recorder’s Blog: https://trimleystmartinrecordersblog.com)
Thank you, Jenny! Courage and doggedness to the fore. You appear to be eating your way through the words…..
I just put it on my desk top, so I’ll be checking. I started out with Me and my Green BIn 6 years ago and like you I put my heart and soul into it, adding references like yours. Now I have simplified, do much less text and post less often. You are inspiring me again!
Oh, why didn’t I know about your blog (https://meandmygreenbin.blogspot.com)? Thanks for mentioning it, Taya! I will be checking it out… Loved the birdseed sock!
What a delightful summer post! And I can attest to the deliciousness of your blackberry tartlets…
Thank you, Lisa! There will be more…
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