Thornless Blackberry Harvest is Underway

A couple years ago we planted two thornless blackberry bushes.  They were cultivars called Arapaho and were developed by the University of Arkansas.  Every blackberry bush I've ever been associated grew wild along fence rows and had thorns.  These are different - we planted them in the yard and they have absolutely no thorns.  Last year they produced a few, fat, juicy berries.  This year they have put out new canes and have gotten larger.  The berries are also numerous.  Each day we pick them to try to stay ahead of the birds who have also discovered them.

One of the two bushes, loaded with berries

First, they turn red and then black.

The berries are big and juicy.  We'll normally eat one while picking.  It is sweet and juicy and warm from the summer sun.

I hope we are able to keep it growing so that it gets bigger and spreads out.

We've just started to pick, but we'll bring them inside and wash them and then place them on a tray in the freezer.  When adequately frozen, we use a spatula to remove them from the tray and put them into zip loc bags, the gallon size.  They are individually frozen so they are easy to measure out to make pies or cobblers.

It is hard to beat a homemade blackberry pie and a cup of coffee!

I Am A Pie Guy

I leave the house each morning about 5:30 am and drive approximately 42 minutes to work.  While driving, I enjoy a thermos of coffee, sweetened slightly by a half teaspoon of local honey with pour of heavy cream from our cows.  I was about 20 minutes into my trip and had finished about half of the coffee.  I reached over and took a sip of coffee, but something was odd.  There was something solid in my mouth.  Coffee is supposed to be liquid.  I spit the solid substance into my hand and turned on the light.  It looked like a raisin.  Who put a raisin in my coffee? 

Wait a minute!  That's not a raisin.  It's a FLY!!!  I spit it out and sat there driving.  Should I pour the rest of the coffee out?  The coffee that has been marinating in fly juice?  Nah, I just finished it and tried real hard not to think about it.  It took every bit of concentration I could muster.  Let's think about more pleasant thoughts, shall we?

Since the land has been purchased across the road and plowed, our dewberry patch is gone.  We found some growing in the back and picked three quarts, and that's not bad.  It's just not the 3 gallons we used to pick.  Our thornless blackberries are growing nicely, but with two bushes, we primarily pick them just to eat one by one. 

One evening a friend dropped by with a bucket of berries he had picked from his blackberry patch and wanted to give them to us!  What a blessing!!  Big, plump, sweet blackberries...

You'll never see my turn down dessert.  I have a sweet tooth, so I like all types of sweets.  I think my favorite, though, is homemade pie.  Coconut cream with a tall meringue, pecan, apple, peach, chocolate.  I've not found a pie that I didn't like, although I heard in England they serve a kidney pie.  I don't think that sounds good.

Anyway, Tricia decided to make a blackberry pie with our bucket of berries.  She made up a homemade crust, added flour, berries, and butter...

It wasn't long before it was ready to come out of the oven.

I attempted and failed to get a slice of pie without it falling apart. 

A slice of homemade pie and a cup of coffee (minus the fly).  One of life's simple pleasures.

Making Homemade Dewberry Jelly

Being that we're knocking on the door to the month of March, I figured I'd meander over to the ditch in front of the house and see how the blackberry bushes survived the plow.  They are actually dewberries, a close relative of blackberries that grow alongside the ditch.  The landowner, after a number of years of not plowing, paid a farmer to plow the field this past fall and I was worried that the wild blackberries (actually dewberries) were toast.  But alas...


Blooming, healthy dewberries

See those little white blooms I focused in on?  Yep, those'll be beautiful berries, waiting to be picked and put in a bucket before long.  

Dewberry blooms

Armed with buckets and a penchant for getting stickers stuck in our fingers, we crossed the road last Spring and picked four one gallon size freezer bags full of dewberries.  We wash them and put them in individual layers in the freezer and then put them in freezer bags.  This way you can pour out the exact amount you need to make jelly, pie, muffins or cobbler.  We've eaten a bunch, but with the Spring blackberry harvest approaching quickly, we need to clear out the inventory in the freezer and make some jelly!  Here goes.  Pour 5 pints of whole berries in a container:  I took these out of the freezer.

Berry Good!

   

Measured out

While I'm taking care of processing the berries, I put the half pint jelly jars, along with the lids and rubber gaskets in the canner to sterilize.  I'm actually using a new type of lid, called Tattler lids.  They are reusable so I won't have to ever buy store bought lids again!


Sterilizing jars, lids, and gaskets

I put the 5 pints of berries in a pot on the stove and grab a potato masher and commence to mashing up the berries.  This is good exercise and an excellent stress reliever.
 

Use some 'elbow grease' to mash them up

Pretty soon this is what it looks like:


Dewberry puree

Now this is an optional step that we do.  Dewberries have a million little seeds that we don't really like, so we pour the mashed up concoction into a fine sieve to strain out the seeds.     

Straining out the seeds

By using a spoon to stir and force through the sieve, you'll end up with 3 3/4 cups of prepared Dewberry juice in a measuring cup.


Seedless Dewberry juice ready for jelly-making

Go ahead and pour the juice into a dutch oven and add 4 1/2 cups sugar and stir while heating.   

Adding the sugar

To the juice and sugar mixture, Benjamin adds one box of Sure Jell Fruit Pectin:


Adding Sure Jell

 While stirring continuously, bring this to a full boil on high heat so that it continues to boil even as you stir it.   

Full rolling boil

Remove from heat and then quickly ladle this into the sterilized half pint jars using a canning funnel.  Fill to within 1/8 inch of the top of the jars.  This is very hot and sticky so be careful.  Not to worry though, any spills offer an opportunity to test the flavor of the jelly.


Ladling the sweet elixir into the jars

Then I'll take the sterilized Tattler lids and put the rubber gaskets on the rims.  

Affixing the gasket on the Tattler lid

If you've gotten any jelly on the rim of the jar, wipe clean with a rag and put the lid on each jar.

Screw the rings on the lids tightly and put in your canner on an elevated rack for processing, ensuring that the water covers the top of the jars by 1 or 2 inches.


Processing the jelly

Cover and bring your water to a gentle boil, allowing the jelly to process for 5 minutes before removing them from the water bath with your canning tongs.     

Removing the processed jelly after 5 minutes

This is our compost bucket that we keep under our sink for coffee grounds and fruit and vegetable peelings.  To this, we'll add the dewberry seeds and incorporate into the garden soil.  We constantly amend our garden soil with as much organic matter as we can get our hands on.


Dewberry seed compost

Back to the work at hand, remove all the jars of processed jelly from the water bath canner and allow them to cool and sit undisturbed for 24 hours.
 

Ready for a spoon and a homemade piping-hot buttermilk biscuit!

I made two batches of homemade dewberry jelly which yielded 12 half pints (10 1/2 pint and 1 pint) of dewberry jelly.  These will be labeled and go into our pantry to be used over the next year.

Interesting (to me) facts about blackberries (or dewberries) from: http://www.pickyourown.org/blackberryjelly.php - an excellent source for 'berrying' information.

• Blackberry tea was thought to be a cure for dysentery during the Civil War.  During outbreaks, temporary truces were declared so that both Confederate and Union soldiers could forage for blackberries to ward off the disease.  Who knew?
• Berries contain antioxidants to ward off cancer causing free radicals. 
• Blackberries were enjoyed by the ancient Greeks, who believed them to be a cure for diseases of the mouth and throat as well as gout.
• The blackberry leaf was also used as an early hair dye, having been recommended by Culpeper, the English herbalist, to be boiled in a lye solution in order to "maketh the hair black."  (Not gonna try this one.)