It is black raspberry season again. Last year’s jam was a bit of a disappointment (a bit SEEDY, despite laborious measures taken which removed huge wads of seeds but also left behind huge wads of seeds because, according to Paul and William’s research, black raspberries have on average 49 seeds per berry), so until today I was letting the children get their snacks outside from the raspberry bushes while I sat in the air conditioning reading the new Elizabeth Berg (which, heavens, she is now at 80% homily-vehicle, 10% unrealistic plot problems (have you read her latest? I would use the spare undies in my backpack or my empty Power Bar wrapper or THE SHIRT I WAS WEARING before I would use DIRT and my HAND), and 10% lists of deliberately interesting/awesome things to find pleasure in such as “crisp bacon on yellow plates, mornings spent talking in bed under a handmade quilt, the smell of a newborn’s head, fresh-baked bread on a sunny countertop, lemons in a blue pottery bowl”) (nevertheless I continue to read each new book).
Here are my tips for black raspberry picking, gleaned from hard experience:
Tip 1: Begin with a double (MINIMUM) shot of something at least 80 proof. This will make you—well, not IMPERVIOUS, but certainly LESS pervious to the following things:
a. bug bites
b. thorn scratches
c. watching as an earwig crawls off the berry you just picked and onto your fingers
d. feeling a tickle on your arm and discovering it is not a mosquito but a huge black spider
e. moving a branch and having seriously five mosquitoes fly into your face
f. the heat
g. the dripping sweat
h. the thought that maybe, if it is hot and unpleasant outside and you are dripping sweat and enduring mosquitoes and earwigs and spiders and thorns, that perhaps this is not God’s Bounty Given For Man To Harvest For Nourishment Of The Body but is instead a clearly-marked GATEWAY TO HELL
Tip 2: Plan to spend some time suffering. This will yield you:
a. A surprisingly full bowl of berries!
b. Many itchy bites and scratches
(These photos are from last year (I see I was advocating liquor back then as well), because when I got inside I found the camera out of batteries and there is ONLY SO MUCH A HUMAN WOMAN CAN TAKE.)
Tip 3: Rinse berries and put in a single layer on a cookie sheet. Then freeze for later, when you are in your right mind, decision-making-wise.
I use a non-stick pan, so that they won’t stick. I haven’t tried a regular one, so I don’t know if they DO stick: by the time I’m putting my hard-won berries on a cookie sheet, I am not willing to SCREW AROUND with experiments. Put the sheet of berries in the freezer. When frozen, transfer berries to ziplock freezer bags. This will give you time to think about what end-result is worth the effort it took to pick those berries. Berry crumble? No way. Jam? Too seedy last year. Smoothies? Not when I can buy these for $2 a bag at the grocery store. Dowry for sole female child? MAYBE.
If you ever find yourself in Oregon, I have more raspberries in my backyard than I can handle. No matter how many canes I remove each year, there’s still too many. But, no thorns! No biting bugs! Tiny unobtrusive spiders!
Oh man. This post was hilarious in its entirety. You are too funny!
When I saw blackberries at the grocery recently I actually thought of you and your post last year about the insanity of picking them….the first time or this go-round.
I live for blackberries. We gobble them by the handful every summer. Put them in fridge to chill, stir in a teaspoon of water and sugar to taste and you got the perfect summer treat.
Between the earwigs and the spiders I’d say any blackberries that happened to spring up in my yard would be happily given over to deer and rabbits. You are a brave soul!
I only harvested the blackberry & raspberry bushes in my yard once for many of the reasons you listed, PLUS I don’t eat them myself (or jam), PLUS I’d just rather keep having drinks. I did suffer the initial harvest & then jamming & canning, etc. People ADORED the jam (in fact, I’m saving a few select jars for gifts, & it’s been YEARS), though, so I guess the venture was a success.
ALSO, I have to say, I have always been creeped out by berry harvesting ever since my Dad did some in the backwoods of Georgia years and years ago & got so many chigger bites (he should have tucked his pants in his socks) that we had to take him to the hospital because he was pretty much in anaphylactic shock. Fun times.
BUT, keep on keeping on, Swistle. I imagine the kids love them.
You know, these grow wild in the NC mountains where my in-laws have a lake house. Last year I picked a bunch (no skeeters there!) while I was out on a walk and brought my blackberries home to prove to the MIL that I’m a woman of the earth too. Might not have grown up on a farm, but dagnabbit, I can pick fruit in the wild!
She looked at them and was pleased with me, but she made sure to correct me, these were NOT blackberries, they are black raspberies. I thought she was out of her mind, but I googled, and sure enough, they’re black raspberries. Who knew that they even existed????
Wasn’t long after my experience that you posted your thing about the berries and I cracked up when you posted your corrections.
Seriously, black raspberries???? Who has ever heard of that? Not me, but my farm-raised MIL sure knew the difference.
Oooohhhhh… thank you. I had a pretty rough day, and reading this made me laugh it all off. Thanks!!!
I love “pervious.” Although now that I’m saying it in my head it sounds like it means something else entirely.
Dowry possibility wins the day. When AREN’T girls worth their weight in black raspberries?
We have black raspberries, too, and Addy is always begging me to go out and pick with her. I too always get scratched up and end up staring at the bowl of berries and thinking, “Hmm. Worth the effort?”
Also, I KNOW OF WHAT YOU SPEAK re: Elizabeth Berg’s latest. I love her imagery, generally speaking, but how many times can one reference the pleasures of pastel pottery and the sight of old women eating ice cream cones and the smell of coffee in the morning et cetera ad infinitum before it just becomes lazy writing? Nonetheless I too read everything she ever publishes.
This last one though I was listening to on CD, and I actually… I GOT BORED with it and returned it to the library before I finished it. I have never done such a thing before with one of her novels. Should I go check out the book and try to finish it? (Promise me there are no more dirt/hand wiping scenarios first. Because yeah, I was actually muttering “Come ON” at the CD player when that part came on. Who couldn’t come up with a better option than DIRT?)
I don’t have any berry bushes, so I just drink.
I bet you could make some kind of fun alcoholic drink with berries.
I have to second meanliving – I moved to Oregon years ago from New England and the berry picking experience here is totally different. No oppressive humidity, no mosquitoes, fewer bugs in general. Much much better. Come visit and pick berries here some time.
My husband snotily informs me every time I refer to these as blackberries that they are BLACK RASPBERRIES. I mostly tell him I don’t give a rat’s fart what they are called, we both know what I mean. Then I continue to refer to them as blackberries just to irritate him. Sometimes a marriage just has to roll like that ;-)
My favorite parts:
– The whole bit about the Elizabeth Berg books, even though I’ve never read a single book by her.
– “This will make you—well, not IMPERVIOUS, but certainly LESS pervious to the following things:”
– “perhaps this is not God’s Bounty Given For Man To Harvest For Nourishment Of The Body but is instead a clearly-marked GATEWAY TO HELL”
– “Dowry for sole female child? MAYBE.”
The earwig and spider bits made me shudder. Ew.
looking back, i now note that my mother cleverly sent my sister and i to pick all the raspberries and blackberries each year. (growing up in NJ as we did, the thorn / bug / spider / STINGING INSECT situation was… also unpleasant.)
Ooh, make a black raspberry pie! It’s the most delicious pie! We fight over who gets the last piece in our house.
Sarah- There is, blessedly, only one hand/dirt story total. But I don’t feel any urge to urge you to go back and finish it. It seemed so ORCHESTRATED: I felt like the characters were being forced to change personality types as the book went along, just to accommodate the points the author wanted to make.
Aha! Thank you so much for telling me. I was feeling really twitchy about leaving the book unfinished, but yeah, as it went on (I left it at the part where – SPOILER ALERT- Sadie arrives home, newly married) I was getting the feeling that these were not real people. Which, I mean, OBVIOUSLY, but usually when Berg is narrating internal monologues or thought processes I get an “Oh yeah, me too” kind of feeling, and I just wasn’t feeling it with this one.
“LESS pervious” is my new favorite phrase. That and “I use a non-stick pan, so that they won’t stick.”
I use hard earned raspberries to make this berry pie, and simplify the pie by getting a premade oreo crust. It is one of the few things i have found that makes berry picking feel worth it.
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/08/raspberry-cream-pie/
They have black raspberry frozen yogurt at Ben and Jerry’s now, at least in my neck of the woods. Yummy and no scratches. I probably didn’t feel nearly as virtuous ordering it at the counter as you did picking your berries however.
Now I’m confused. The commenter above pointed out they are black RASPberries and not blackBERRIES as I called them. So I thought humpf, must be a southern thing.
Then I googled it and blackberries exist as well as black raspberries. So are they different berries? Is blackberry just a southern name?
In case they are different things, I eat blackberries with water and sugar. I’ve never had a black raspberry (if they are different) if they are the same thing that’s just confusing.
Disclaimer: I promise I do not have The Crazy.
Upon further research, they are two different berries. I’ve never seen nor heard of black raspberries so maybe they don’t grow down here where I am??
Interesting. I must research further.
This made me actually laugh out loud at my desk at work: “perhaps this is not God’s Bounty Given For Man To Harvest For Nourishment Of The Body but is instead a clearly-marked GATEWAY TO HELL”