I’ve really taken to foraging and fruit-picking since moving to Salem and have been waiting patiently for a chance to plunder some really overgrown, menacing blackberry bushes.
These bushes are EVERYWHERE. On the side of the road, lurking in the ditches, hanging down from the trees they are strangling. But we decided to head to Willamette Mission State Park, home to its share of blackberry-edged walking paths with bushes so full that birds and men alike cannot strip them of all of their bounty.
They are the bitchy ex-girlfriends of invasive species.
Now that are longish-term visitors Jeff and Foy from Iowa (near the Cottonwood at Willamette Mission) are here, we’ve got a team of produce pickers as well as happy house guests.
Adam, armed with the best protective device among us (a cardboard berry flat), discovered the best possible approach to picking. He simply lays the flat over a cheeky bramble that is obscuring a particularly large clump and goes to town.
I was less lucky. And kind of dumb, because I wore a long, flowy skirt and frequently got caught in the brambles. Indeed, if ever I gave up on a particular bush, it wasn’t because of lack of berries, it was because that bush had just hurt me too many times. Like a jilted lover, I finally got it and moved on.
Check out those scratches on Jeff’s hands. Actually, they aren’t from thorny blackberries, but from his jungle cat, Zeus, whom he brought back from Panama.
Jeff and Foy were champion pickers, and in the end, the four of us yielded about 12 pounds of blackberries in about an hour. The box sagged with the weight of them.
These berries are dark and shiny as Obsidian, so plump and full of juice that they sometimes exploded with ripeness as we pulled them off the bush. By the time we got them home, they were already falling apart.
Adam says they taste draconian.
Ten pounds of ripe and quickly deteriorating berries, and two for our neighbors, means a necessarily speedy processing time. I would have liked to fall down off my feet and read a book after the haul, we set to turning them into things. First on the docket, blackberry pie.
Now that’s a pie that sings — compensation enough for so much torturous picking.
We love to pick the blackberries at Willamette Mission – and also at Minto Brown. We take long walks at Minto Brown and stop along the way to “nourish and refuel” ourselves for our hikes. Your pie looks delicious – and I’m sure it tasted even better than it looks!
Really – just jealous. Silly long growing season!
Mulligan, SHHHHHH! You aren’t supposed to tell people where the really good stashes are.
Our neighbor said to go to Minto Brown, but we wanted to see the Cottonwood that day…
That pie looks delicious! Now I’m craving blackberries. When I was a kid my Aunt always made blackberry cobbler for our family get-togethers and my uncle would whip up some homemade ice cream to go with it. So for me, blackberries taste great and bring back wonderful memories.
We have lots of Blackberries left to harvest They are called Chester thorless,they taste just like the one on the highways. Call if interested in picking some 503-835-0740