Blackberry Picking

One of the best things about late summer is blackberries! I've always loved fresh blackberries, from the days they grew, wild, in my childhood backyard, to the years I was a teenager and found them on the path of a local park, to my summer job in landscaping where I happened across wild bushes near my work sites, and finally, to my days as a mother with access to locally grown u-pick thornless blackberries.















I was planning on going earlier in the week, but weather happened, and they closed the picking fields due to heavy rain (they don't want their fields damaged, after all). But we finally made it out on Thursday morning. I picked a bunch of peaches on a whim, but the whole purpose of going was to get yummy, fresh blackberries. And I love that they're thornless, so the kids could help, too.


















Melinda was happy enough to help me, although she complained when I didn't follow her down the row quickly enough. I was taking too much time trying to get all the ripe berries I could find, whereas she was only grabbing the berries she could plainly see. Jacob didn't want to pick berries, but instead found a broken branch and started whacking everything in sight with it. Alex gave me a bit of a hard time, being too restless for both being carried and put in the stroller. Still, we managed to gather a couple flats of blackberries, and about 10 pounds of peaches.


















After I paid for them all, I put them back on the stroller to transport them to our car. I took 3 steps when suddenly all the boxes tumbled off and fell straight to the ground, much to my horror. All those beautiful blackberries, all of that time picking!! Most of them were easily squished by the fall. We did our best to salvage them, but I was heartbroken. I really looked forward to just eating a lot of berries plain, like I love to do. But because they were now much more susceptible to getting moldy and attracting bugs, I had to come up with something different.

When we got home, I washed them all off, and immediately froze a few bags of them for later use. I quickly made a cobbler, and then made blackberry smoothies for myself and the kids. A lot of the peaches got a bit beat up, too, but they still had to sit out on the counter to get soft before I could do anything about them. They're slated to be mostly frozen, as well.

Even though we don't get to enjoy the fresh fruit as much this year, it was still fun to go picking with the kids, and to have a lot of fruit in the freezer. Making memories is half the fun, right?


















Mmmmm. Looks like yummy peaches!!