Blackberrying

As a result of this thread, I went down the lane to check. Ours are nowhere ready to pick☹️
It's probably for the best, as everything in the kitchen is covered in a thick layer of dust, due to the building work.?

Farmor mentioned maggots. I remember gathering loads of blackberries with my children. I put them in a bowl of salty water just in case there were any insects or maggots. It was horrendous. So many maggots came out of them that I had to throw them all away. I told my aunt and she just said they were an extra bit of protein!

I BlackBerry every year. I walk regularly with a group of friends and we take appropriate containers with us for foraging. Great rosehips last weekend!

The rule I use when picking is only to pick ones with white/pale green centers. If the middles are dark, the berries are overripe and might have undesirables in them?. You do see large bluebottle type flies around them sometimes.

Maggiemaybe and Fennel, you may be interested to know that the October 2 week school holiday here in North East Scotland is still known as the Tattie Holidays. You don't see school children picking the tatties now though!

Really? .

When we were children, my granny had a large stand of blackberries - or brambles as we called them in Scotland - in the 'wild' part of her garden so we didn't have to go far afield to gather them. Our Dad made bramble wine, but we were too young to sample it; granny made bramble jelly. When we lived in Norfolk, we discovered a place which nobody else seemed to know about. We picked the luscious berries for several years until one year we turned up to find a notice telling us that the whole field had been sprayed. Disappointed, we turned to our local common which had a plentiful supply. When we moved north the following year, I still had some of them in the freezer with which I made apple and blackberry sorbet. Delicious!

Not odd at all knickas63. We pick blackberries every year and I make jam and pies. Picked a few to eat on the hoof today as we walked on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path.

Farmor, my DH made a lovely tea tonight and pudding was a big bowl of ice cream and very ripe brambles with dark middles fresh from the allotment. I thought of your post as I scoffed them, looking straight ahead as I ate.

You can wash them in salty water and the undesirables will float to the surface and can be skimmed off.
I fished a few out of the pan when I was cooking some for bramble jelly - the blackberries etc were strained anyway.

I do wonder if vegetarians realise how much meat they may eat inadvertently.

Oh my walk home from school had blackberry bushes on each side of the path.
I used to eat lots, so I suppose I ate maggots and things too.

I always go blackberrying. I always see lots of people doing it. They are early this year.

That brought back some memories !!

We always went blackberrying as a child. My Mum made bramble jelly jam ( as none of us kids liked ‘bits’ in our jam. She strained it through an old stocking suspended on the legs of un upturned stool into a bowl, and the decanted into jars.

In fact my girls wouldn’t eat anything other than Nanny’s jam too!

We take our elder 2 grandkids, they love going . Not much makes it into the jar but judging by the purple fingers and tongues they enjoy it.