We forage for wild blackberries every year. Due to our cool May and June this year, the blackberries are ripening a couple of weeks late. But yesterday, in the late afternoon/early evening, my two daughters said they thought there might be some ripe berries nearby on their walking path. They took a few containers and brought home the first of our 2022 blackberry harvest, about 12 quarts. My main job with the blackberries is to wash and freeze them all.
Last year, I posted a photo of one of the two giant bags of frozen blackberries we put away. These bags are the size of a standard bed pillow when filled.
Here they are empty. I've set a dinner plate on top of the stack of bags to give you a sense of just how big these are. My family will be picking feverishly for the next 2 weeks to gather as many as we can.
We eat blackberries all winter long in pies, crisps, yogurt, smoothies, pancake syrup, in oatmeal -- anyway I can think to use them. I have no idea what the value is of this much fruit. But I do know that I don't need to buy much fruit at all during winter because of all of the berries we forage each year.
My husband commented that my daughters "were out there with all the other poor people picking the berries." I set him straight on his thinking -- we don't forage blackberries because we're poor. We forage these berries because we're smart. I suspect that there are a lot of folks who turn up their noses at these wild-grown, freely available berries. The way I see it, these berries are super nutrient dense. They are there for the taking. If we don't pick them, perhaps half or more will fall off the canes to rot on the ground and be wasted. I feel like they've been put in our area for consumption. If we're willing to harvest and use them, that is better than allowing them to go to waste. And we save money and boost our health because we're willing to eat them.
Obviously, I hope we fill two of these large bags again this year. I guess we'll just have to see how well we do in the foraging.
