Wild blackberries are usually an August thing in our neck of the woods. But a week ago Saturday, my daughters and I took a very long walk around the area and found many of the blackberries were beginning to ripen.
As both daughters like to add fresh blackberries to yogurt for breakfast, I suggested we meet up at the bus stop one evening and do some picking. I brought containers for each of us, and in a half an hour, we picked 2 and a half quarts!
We used some of those fresh berries with dinner that night, topped with honey-vanilla yogurt. And the next morning, my 2 daughters did indeed add blackberries to their breakfast yogurt. Since they were already washed and drained, I froze the remaining berries in ziploc bags, to use in pies, cobblers, smoothies, syrups and jam, sometime in the future.
My daughters and I will be meeting up at their bus stop in Tuesday evening, this week, to pick another 3 or 4 quarts of blackberries. This early blackberry season is a real blessing to us. Our raspberries and blueberries are about done for the year, and there are very few early apples this year. These blackberries are our fresh fruit for the next couple of weeks (that's when the early pears will be ready).
