It is a wonder, and I call it the MOABB - The Mother Of All Blackberry Bushes.
Just a short bike ride from my home, a lush patch of purple-black berries hangs heavily from heaving, prickly canes along an old logging path through the woods.
For the past few years, I've made it a point to visit this spot every year around this time to reap the abundant forest bounty.
My first day of berry gathering was serenaded by the calls of a raven in an unseen nearby tree.
The sun shone brightly, and the temperature and humidity combined to create that perfect sense of oneness with nature - where the boundaries between self and surroundings blur.
Over two glorious days of picking, I collected several litres of perfect, dark berries. When I got home I made a few cans of long boil jam with no added pectin and a moderate amount of sugar.
I find immense joy in living off the land as much as possible in my area and continue to learn and expand my knowledge every year.
There's something thrilling about gathering and processing free food from the forest or my garden, year after year.
How's the bounty in your area?
Just a short bike ride from my home, a lush patch of purple-black berries hangs heavily from heaving, prickly canes along an old logging path through the woods.
For the past few years, I've made it a point to visit this spot every year around this time to reap the abundant forest bounty.
My first day of berry gathering was serenaded by the calls of a raven in an unseen nearby tree.
The sun shone brightly, and the temperature and humidity combined to create that perfect sense of oneness with nature - where the boundaries between self and surroundings blur.
Over two glorious days of picking, I collected several litres of perfect, dark berries. When I got home I made a few cans of long boil jam with no added pectin and a moderate amount of sugar.
I find immense joy in living off the land as much as possible in my area and continue to learn and expand my knowledge every year.
There's something thrilling about gathering and processing free food from the forest or my garden, year after year.
How's the bounty in your area?
Gosh this brings back memories of childhood. Mum would give us empty ice cream containers and us kids would go 'out the back' and find millions of blackberry bushes to fill the containers with. Mum would then put the berries in a sink full of water to encourage any little worms and insects to come out and then make delicious jam. 30 years later I started doing this with my own children and now we grow our own berries. Home made jam is the BEST. To be fair I'm not flash at growing berries but we have lots of blackcurrants and I do well with stone fruit on our property so along with blackcurrant jam there is always peach & plum jams, rhubarb and ginger jam (THE BEST) as well as a medley of the above. We now also swap harvests to enjoy damsons & crabapple varieties. I would still forage if I knew the secret local spots, alas I'm not sure there are many anymore. And these days you never know what's been sprayed in some areas, such a shame.
ReplyDeleteThe path behind my apartment building is more or less lined with blackberry bushes. It wasn't always like that but they must have come over from the nearby 'wild park' more or less created over ten years ago. Not a fruit eater myself but I see they are not unnoticed, I see collectors with bags and baskets passing by. Makes me happy enough to see. Nature in the city, it exists.
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