Dewberries... Woods To Table

It's dewberry time.  Dewberries are similar to blackberries, but better.  They are bigger and juicier.  They grow on vines that run along the ground in the woods and edges of fields.  They come our earlier than blackberries.  Years ago they grew in abundance in the ditch across the road from us.  They no longer grow there since the field is mowed frequently now.  

Not to worry.  I've found a 'honey hole' in the woods behind the henhouse.  I noticed all the white flowers and made a mental note to check back in a few weeks.  I'm glad I did.  Tricia and I walked back there yesterday with quart-sized yogurt containers.  In three shakes of a billy goat's tail, we had them filled up and were walking back to the house.  Here's a sneak peek at what dewberries look like:

I have a weakness for pies, so I was thinking homemade dewberry pie would be a nice dessert for Sunday after church with some coffee.  Tricia was thinking about making a homemade dewberry tart.  Well, I like them both.  I'm not gonna sit here and split hairs about which one is better.  Bright and early Sunday morning, the wife began making the dough and putting together the dewberry tart.  Doesn't that look nice?

After folding up the edges, she began applying an egg wash to the sides of the crust.

And then, yes, you can't forget to sprinkle some sugar on the edges...

This tart is so fresh.  Those dewberries slept in the field last night.

Speaking of fresh.  Here's the dewberry tart, fresh out of the oven.

We sliced that up and served homemade goat-milk ice cream on top.  So good!  I'll be checking the woods for more dewberries in a couple of days.  When picking there were some that were still red that will be ripening in a day or two.  We'll pick more and maybe make a pie or use them in a smoothie.

Johnny "Mulberry Seed"

I grew up hearing the folk legend about Johnny Appleseed, a man who traveled across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and even into Canada planting apple trees.  I like to plant trees.  In fact, I dug up a bunch of live oak trees that were growing in the flower beds and put them in pots.  We'll plant them strategically after they've grown bigger.  

In the late afternoon, we've been over the fence on the property that borders ours.  There's a little patch of woods and I've been checking out the dewberries growing along the woods.  Dewberries, in my opinion, are even better than blackberries.  They are sweeter and more plump.  

Dewberries in almost every stage, from green to almost ripe

Dewberries, when ripened are soft and can burst in your hand, staining your fingers purple.  

We like to go out to the woods with cups and pick dewberries, eating a few, but bringing most inside.  I've been thinking about how good a warm dewberry cobbler with ice cream on top would taste!  We've been enjoying them for breakfast blended with bananas and honey in a goatmilk kefir smoothie.

But back to Johnny Appleseed.  While walking in the woods picking dewberries, a young tree caught my eye.  I had been watching it for a couple of years.  It is the tree you see below leaning over our fence from the neighboring property.  It is leaning way over to try to get some sunlight.  The privet, Chinaberry, and Chinese tallow trees all compete for sunlight in that little stretch of woods.

I had my suspicions of this tree for a while now.  The leaves almost confirmed its identity, but I needed one more thing to confirm my suspicions - fruit.  And there it was.  Mulberries!  You can see the ripening berries below.

So here is the story behind the mulberry tree.  A few years ago, a milk customer would always bring us big bowls of blackberries that he picked.  They were delicious.  He would even bring some to a friend of his in Oberlin that made Blackberry wine.  Well, one day he brought me a tall cup full of mulberries.  He instructed me not to eat them, but instead, to go back in the woods and scatter them so that they would grow.  That's exactly what I did.  (Well, I DID eat a few of them.)

I remember as a kid, my grandma and grandpa had a big mulberry tree that bordered their property.  We would eat those mulberries until we couldn't eat any more.  Our hands were stained purple and so were our shirts and lips and tongue.  The birds loved mulberries, too, and they would make quite a mess around the mulberry tree.  

Anyway, the mulberry tree that is now growing is in the general location of where I scattered them several years ago.  I was happy to see success in the mulberry propagation project.  

There's a nice, ripe, purple one.  I'm gonna get it before the birds have a chance to eat it.  There aren't very many mulberries on the little tree yet, but we look forward to future years as the little tree continues to grow.  I'm so glad that I didn't eat that cup of mulberries, but planted most of them.  Good things come to those who wait, I guess.  Johnny Appleseed would be proud.

Dewberries By the Fenceline

 

A week ago I showed you some photos of our thornless blackberries.  They are blooming like there's no tomorrow and there are tiny unripe berries all over the bushes.  It will be a couple weeks, I imagine, before they are ripe.  Russ took a few cuttings off of them and has them successfully rooted.  He is going to start a berry patch at his house.  That gives me an idea to do the same at our place.  It would spread the patch and give us more yield.

While we are waiting for them to ripen, we have other berries to choose from that God has propagated along the fencelines and ditches.  Dewberries.  They are similar to blackberries, except they ripen a little earlier, run along the ground instead of bushes/canes, and they are plumper and sweeter.  I stumbled across a patch of dewberries on Saturday.  What I didn't eat right off the vine, I picked and brought inside.  Tricia skimmed some heavy cream off of Clarabelle's milk and mixed the fresh-picked berries with the cream.  What a treat!

Dewberries and blackberries remind me of my great-grandmother.  I remember she would make homemade blackberry pie with a sweet-dough crust.  She made a sweet white sauce that she would ladle on top of the pie.  Good golly!  I miss her.  She made a mean pie.  I think we could solve most of the world's problems over a slice of homemade pie and a good cup of coffee.

Dewberry Time!

In past years, the land directly across the street from us was our "dewberry picking" spot.  It was a soybean field that had not been planted in quite a while.  It was plowed infrequently and became a prime spot for dewberries.  Well, the land was sold by the doctor who owned it to a developer.  It was plowed up, and we lost our dewberry spot.

Not to worry.  On the neighboring property behind us, just behind the hen house, there is another patch of land that has grown up in weeds.  The owners are absentee.  From time to time, I'll clean it up with a machete and I'll let the cows and goats in to eat down the weeds.  This piece of land also has dewberries!  On a beautiful Saturday morning, I rounded up Tricia, Russ, Benjamin and Belle to come help.  We each had buckets and we fanned out and picked dewberries.

Tricia was a little concerned about snakes.  To be sure there are snakes in abundance.  We now have two fake eggs missing from the hen house.  No doubt they were eaten by snakes.  Snakes who now have a REALLY bad case of constipation - they aren't going to be able to digest a ceramic egg!  Regardless, most of the snakes in the area are harmless rat snakes, king snakes, and garter snakes.  We still kept our eyes open.  The dewberries were easy to spot.

They were plump and delicious.  Benjamin seemed to pick more than all of us.  We were eating and picking as we walked through the area.  Pretty soon we were done.  In just a few minutes, we picked a half gallon.

We took them inside, washed them up, and we'll eat them in smoothies and in homemade ice cream.  Livin' off the land.  Love it!

You Never Miss the Water Till the Well Runs Dry

The little patch of woods behind the barn is not our land.  The owners are absentee owners.  We never see them.  They don't mow the grass and the grass and privet gets tall.  It becomes a breeding ground for mosquitoes, possums, snakes, rats, and other critters.  Oftentimes, I'll open the gate and just go walking back there in the woods.

There are a few nice live oak trees in the woods, but it is primarily old willow trees, Chinese tallow trees, Chinaberry trees, and privet.  Not too many years ago (30 or 40, perhaps?), things probably looked a lot different back there.

As I walk through, I come across a large block of bricks with 1 inch diameter rebar sticking out of it.  I'm not sure what this structure was.  It looks like something uncovered in the Amazon rainforest.  Moss and fern is reclaiming it, and the bricks are crumbling.

Then I come across this.  Once being a rice farmer, I know exactly what this is.  This is an old rice irrigation well.  There was once an engine that turned eight belts that wrapped around the pulley atop the gearhead and turned a shaft that pulled water up from beneath the ground.  The water flowed up from the pipe and into a pipe (now missing) that moved the groundwater into the concrete flume you see in the foreground. 

Crystal clear, cool water flowed through the man-made canal and into surrounding rice fields, flooding them to grow acres and acres of rice.  Those fields which once produced rice are no longer flooded by irrigation wells, but now are covered in houses populated by families.  Trees have now grown up in some of those fields and crumbling remains of irrigation wells that are now just rusting hulks of iron litter the landscape.

It is amazing to me how fast the landscape changes in just a few years.  Entire cycles have come and gone as evidenced by the willow tree in the center of the photograph below which has grown to maturity, died, and now has oyster mushrooms feeding on it.  In a short time this tree will fall and succumb to beetles, worms, and other forces of nature that will turn this tree into forest soil.

Not to get all philosophical, but life is short.

 James 4:14 King James Version (KJV)14 Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 

Like the Second Law of Thermodynamics says, things are moving from order to disorder, deteriorating.  I walked back from the woods thinking about this.  Kind of depressing as you think about it. 

I did, however, spot something to lift my spirits.  Check out all the white blooms decorating the vines running along the ground on the south side of the hen house.

Those are the blooms of dewberries.  They'll be ripening and we'll be back here scouring the ground for those big sweet berries that will appear.

I've marked the spot where the dewberries are and will check back each weekend until it's time to harvest.

Plan B for Blackberries

After milking chores were done Saturday morning, Tricia and I had a good cup of coffee on the front porch.  There was a thunderstorm blowing in from west to east and we watched while the rain fell against the newly plowed field.  It was peaceful and relaxing to watch the much-needed rain and wind blow through.  We sat and watched it until the rain started getting us all wet.  Then we went inside.

In the photo you can see the field on the other side of the road.  That outside levee was our wild dewberry patch.  They would come up every year and we'd go out to the ditch with buckets and pick them.  We would come back and make Dewberry Jelly.  We've posted about it HERE.  With the field being plowed up, we waved farewell to our wild dewberry patch.  Well, it wasn't really "OURS," was it?

But we weren't giving up without a fight.  I called Russ and it just so happens that his Horticulture Club at LSU was having a plant sale.  Wouldn't you know it?  In addition to vegetables, herbs, and trees on sale, they were selling berries - blackberries, in particular.  The specific variety he selected for us to try was the Arapaho Thornless Blackberry.  These were developed by the University of Arkansas.  If they produce, even though I'm an LSU Tiger, you may hear me "Call the hogs!"

Russ purchased two for us to try.  The directions said to dig a hole twice as big as the root ball, place it in the hole, backfilling with compost and watering to remove air pockets.

Benjamin and our nephew, Mike, helped plant them and then mulched with hay. The cows provided moral support.

We watered them in good and now we'll just watch them grow.  They are planted right by the muscadine vine trellis.  The Arapaho thornless blackberry can be grown on a trellis, but don't have to be.  I read where they produce berries on second year canes.  If that means what I think it means, we won't have blackberries until next year.  That's okay as we still have a good inventory of blackberry jelly in the pantry.

The other interesting thing I read about them is that cuttings can be taken off of them and rooted very easily.  We may need to do exactly that to get enough blackberries to make jelly.  We'll see how things go.  After thinking about it, it looks like we have a good blueberry crop coming along this year.  Perhaps we can make some Blueberry Jelly this year instead of Blackberry Jelly?

Food from the Ditch

Well that sounds disgusting, doesn’t it?  Not really.  The property just over the road that runs in front of our home is overgrown.  It hasn’t been planted in rice or soybeans in about five years (maybe more than that) and small trees are starting to grow up where agricultural crops once grew.  That doesn’t mean that there’s nothing edible in there, though.

Each year around this time, we keep a watchful eye for blooms in the ditch across the road that signal the soon arrival of dewberries.  Dewberries are a little bigger and juicier than blackberries.  They also ripen a little earlier than blackberries in our area.  They have runners that have a red tinge to them with thorns and they fill the levee and ditch across the road.

Ripe Dewberries

That’s when we get containers and spread out along the roadside ditch looking for berries.  In addition to looking out for dewberries, Tricia also looks out for snakes.

Mom & Son berry pickin'

We generally use quart-sized yogurt or sour cream containers and then have a larger bowl or colander that we dump into as we fill our cups.  With Tricia, Benjamin and I picking, it didn’t take long at all to harvest a gallon from the roadside.  What an easy crop!  You don’t have to plant it, weed it, water it, or tend to it.  The Good Lord takes care of all of that for you.

A quart of fresh berries

Since dewberries have thorns, we get scratched up when picking them, but that’s just part of it.  Usually the plumpest berry is in the hardest to reach place, and you must stick your hand deep into the bushes to get the best ones.  A lot of them will bust in your hand, leaving you with purple fingers.  And of course, you have to eat a few just right off the vine.  It doesn’t get any fresher than that!

A handful of dewberries

We’ll bring them in and wash them up as there are countless little critters like stink bugs and worms crawling on them.  You have to handle them carefully, though because you don’t want them to bust open and lose all the sweet juice that is within the purple-black berry. 

Cleaned up

Once they are completely dry, we’ll process them to separate the juice from the pulp and seeds.

Ready for processing

Then we’ll make dewberry jelly, dewberry pie or muffins, or Tricia will make a syrup by cooking down the juice with a little honey or sugar and we’ll pour that into homemade ice cream to make dewberry ice cream.  That has become a family favorite.  Lots of people buy their own blackberry or dewberry canes to grow and I’ve often thought about buying some and planting them in the yard, especially the thornless varieties, but as long as they grow on their own in the ditch across the road for free, well… I think I’ll just continue letting them grow on their own.

That reminds me.  I don’t think a gallon is near enough.  Benjamin spotted more dewberries growing a little farther down the ditch.  I think I’ll go pick them some more after work today.

Dewberries - Enjoying berries you don't have to plant!

About ten years ago, I was browsing through the garden department in one of the large stores - either Home Depot or Lowe's and ran across some raspberry canes for sale.  I remember thinking how cool it would be to plant and harvest our own raspberries.  I never see them growing around here and sort of see them as an 'exotic' berry.  I picked up a raspberry cane package and brought it to the checkout, envisioning eating fresh raspberries on top of homemade vanilla ice cream.

I planted the raspberry cane according to the directions and watched in despair as the plant made a feeble attempt at growing in our harsh summer before finally calling it quits and withered away.  So much for my raspberry adventure.  I have since learned that raspberries are just not well adapted to our conditions here in South Louisiana.  It made me think: There are enough hassles, why try to force things that aren't going to work?  Like the candy positioned strategically around the checkout counter, I made a impulse purchase based on emotion with the raspberry purchase.  I learned to research first and plant varieties that are known to grow in our climate and zone.  But even better yet, I learned to not plant things that grow for free in the wild!

I'm talking about dewberries.  We have dewberries that grow wild in the overgrown field across from our home.  Dewberries ripen a little earlier than blackberries and they run along the ground and on top of other weeds that grow.  They have a reddish-colored cane or vine that grows with a gazillion pointy spines.  It is a difficult operation to pick dewberries without getting scratched up.  No pain, no gain, though.  We pick them each year at this time and the best part is, we don't have to do anything. No planting, watering, pruning, fertilizing...  They just appear every year, begging us to pick them. We oblige.

Dewberries, to me, are bigger, juicier and sweeter than their cousin, the blackberry, but I wouldn't turn down blackberries, for sure.  You can see how plump this dewberry is:

Juicy Dewberry

All the rain we've experienced in April has put a dent in the amount of time we've had to get out there and pick, so we're a little late and have missed a lot of the crop. We'll still get enough for our use. Fortunately, we still have a gallon or so frozen from last year's crop, along with a good number of jars of seedless dewberry jelly put up in the pantry.  Here is Benjamin reaching in to pick a dewberry or two:

Picking dewberries

Here's a view of what he's trying to grab, without getting all scratched up:

Success!!  For every berry that goes in the bucket, two or three get eaten.  By the time we get back to the house, our fingers are stained purple!

Plump berries!

We just stayed out for a brief time but were able to pick a nice bucketful that we placed in a colander in the vegetable sink and filled with water.  Once the sink filled with water, you start seeing lots of little critters float to the surface - worms, stink bugs, tiny beetles - all things that you don't want to be eating along with your dewberries.  We scoop them all out along with twigs, branches and other trash.

Cleaning the berries

We freeze the cleaned berries spread out on trays.  Once frozen, we scoop them up with a spatula and put in gallon sized freezer bags.  That way they stay individually frozen and are easy to pull out and measure for making things like ---  Homemade Pies!!

This is a nice one that just came out of the oven.  We call it The Black and Blue Pie because it is made with both Dewberries (which are black) and Blueberries.  It is jam-packed with flavor that was harvested right out the front door (dewberries) and right out the back door (blueberries).

Black & Blue Pie

I had a nice slice of pie after supper last night.  We did plant the blueberry bushes, but the dewberries are one of those things that just occur naturally, and I'm thankful for that.

A little slice of happiness

Here is a side view where you can evidence the fact that this pie is loaded with berries!

Even though my raspberry experiment didn't work out as planned, the dewberries that naturally spring up each year across the ditch helped me to see that sometimes the easy way is the best way. Sometimes the best things in life are free!

Making Dewberry Jelly - May 2014

As I checked the inventory of Dewberry jelly in the pantry, I noticed that we have one half pint and one pint left.  It's time to stop fooling around and make some more jelly. It would be tragic to have homemade biscuits with no jelly in the house.  In previous posts, we showed you the really nice dewberries that we picked right in front of the house.  They were plump and juicy and should make some nice jelly.

Delicious Dewberries

We also showed you in earlier posts how we individually freeze the berries to allow for easy pouring or measuring out just what you need.  The recipe calls for 12 cups (or 6 pints) of berries, so I filled up measuring cup full, ensuring that I had enough.  The photo below is a little misleading.  It only held 4 pints, so I measured out 2 pints in another measuring cup and poured them on top.

6 pints of frozen dewberries

Now while I'm doing everything else, I'll put all of the rings, lids, and gaskets in a pot of water on the stove top and sterilize them.  I'm using the Tattler Brand lids  that you can use over and over again.  They were a little tricky at first, but now I like using them.

Sterilizing the lids, rings, and gaskets

We pour the 12 cups of berries into a large saucepan on the stove and add 1 cup of water.  Turn up the heat and bring them to a boil.  Now here's where the fun part comes in.  Get a potato masher and vigorously crush all the berries.  Just keep mashing and crushing until you have a pretty purple concoction.  It smells real fruity and nice.  Keep stirring.  Once it has come to a boil, turn the heat down to medium, put the cover on and simmer for 5 minutes.

Purple Passion

Now personally I don't like all the little seeds in my jelly.  I'll drink them in my morning kefir smoothies for breakfast, but I like my jelly to be seedless, so we'll pour the concoction through a sieve and capture just the juice.  Use the potato masher to work the mush back and forth so that the dewberry juice drains through the sieve into a measuring cup.  What we're looking for is EXACTLY 4 1/2 cups of prepared juice.

Straining out the Seeds

While the juice continues to drain, I clean up my saucepan and add 3 cups of sugar and a box of Sure Jell Premium Fruit Pectin.

Sugar and Sure Jell

I have exactly 4 1/2 cups of dewberry juice.  12 cups of dewberries yielded exactly 4 1/2 cups of juice.

4 1/2 cups of Dewberry Juice

I add 1 cup of water to the sugar/Sure Jell mixture and bring it to a boil that can't be stirred down.

Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

Then I pour my dewberry juice into this boiling mixture and keep 'a stirrin'...

Stirring the Pot

Bring the juice and syrup to a boil while stirring constantly.  Boil for exactly 1 minute.

Now we're ready!

Remove from the heat and using a canning funnel, ladle the hot liquid into your sterilized jars, leaving a little head space at the top of the jars for expansion.

Filling the Jars

12 cups of berries make 4 1/2 cups of juice.  That juice when added to the sugar and Sure Jell will yield exactly 8 half pints of jelly.

Ready to put the lids on and process

Okay, so now I carefully use a rag to wipe off the rims of the jars.  I say carefully because the jars are doggone hot!  Then I put the rubber gaskets on the Tattler lids and put them on jars followed by the bands. This is the tricky part with Tattler lids. You are supposed to tighten the rings down snug and then back off slightly on the bands.

Affixing the lids/gaskets

Put all the jars into the the canner with a wire rack at the bottom so that the glass doesn't touch the bottom of the pot.  Make sure that your jars are covered with 1 to 2 inches of water.  Cover and bring the water to a gentle boil and once the water is boiling, allow them to process for 5 minutes.

Into the water bath canner

Now it is time to remove your jars after they've been in boiling water for 5 minutes. Use your canning tongs.

Out of hot water

Place them on a rack to cool.  Remember to get a couple of hot pads or dish rags and tighten the bands down really tight.  Don't disturb the jars of jelly for 24 hours.  Just let them cool and rest.

Letting the jelly cool

Once 24 hours has passed you can test.  The lids should be sucked down and sealed. If sealed properly, you can use your fingers to lift each jar just by the lid and they should hold.  If not, put the ones that didn't seal in the fridge.  Fortunately, all 8 half pints sealed. and I labeled them.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered!

I'll make one more batch to stock up the pantry.  It is hard to beat homemade seedless Dewberry Jelly!