Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Picking Blackberries




My blackberries are ripening.  I love these blackberries.  They were what “sealed the deal” for me when we bought this house.  We bought the house for a great price, but it was a mess.  No insulation, no 220 wiring, lots of termites etc. etc. etc... but it had blackberries vines in the back yard.  We moved from a town that was covered in blackberries and I knew that they would be one of the things I would miss the most.
Blackberries have been eaten by humans for over 2500 years.  They know this because they found a perfectly preserved body of a 40 year old woman in a bog in Denmark.  They carbon dated her to have lived around 500 BC.  The contents of her stomach were preserved as well, her last meal was unhusked millet and blackberries.  This stuff fascinates me.
This is a picture of my blackberries earlier this spring when the bees were working their magic.   

This is a picture of my blackberries two weeks ago when the weather finally started to get hot. 


The picture at the top of the page is one I took today.  You can see the progression of how they ripen.  It starts with the leading berry.  They’re ready to pick when they get soft and come off very easily.  If you have to tug on them, they won’t be sweet.   


My blackberries ripen in July and usually last through August.  We have a lot of blackberries all at once so we like to make cobblers or freeze them.   They’re a little too seedy to make jam.   The best way to freeze fruit is to lay it out on a cookie sheet first and put that in your freezer for a few hours, before you put the fruit into a zip lock bag or freezer container.  That way the fruit doesn’t stick together.



Yesterday I froze raspberries and blackberries so I could make a breakfast smoothie this morning.


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