You thought a blackberry was...what?

It's blackberry season! No, I'm not talking about those electronic PDA's that you use as a phone, an alarm clock, a calendar, a camera, a radio, and has a lot more memory than you do. I'm talking about blackberries. Fruit. Berries that are black. No discrimination intended.

We have a whole fence covered with blackberry vines just to the north of us. It must be about the length of a football field. If you are familiar with the fruit you know how those vines are. They have a lot of thorns! Particular to the way these vines grow seems to be that underneath the old vines die and on top new ones grow. New vines are thorny, but the old ones have hard thorns that can really tear you up! The photo above makes picking the berries look easy. What deception! The berries seem to grow best right in the middle of all the thorns. You reach in and get a fat juicy berry or two in your hand and as soon as you start to move them toward your mouth, or your picking bucket, a thorn jumps out and grabs you and you drop everything in your hand. Sometimes you reach way in and just as you touch a fat juicy one it drops into the depths of the thicket.

I have my own unique style for picking blackberries. I try to get out there before it gets too hot because I wear a long sleeve shirt to protect my arms. I wear a good hat and safety goggles just in case one goes for my head or eyes. I wear heavy boots to protect my feet and lower legs from thorns (and rattlesnakes that might be trying to sample the fruit). I wear a heavy leather glove on my left hand and I have a pair of pruners in my back pocket. I have a picking bucket on a strap over my sholder adjusted to waist high. That's about it. Then I go to picking.

The easiest picking is when you see a nice clister of berries and you grab it with your gloved hand and bring it out in the open and remove the berries with the other hand. Problem is, their arent too many like that. Most of them are hiding well beneath the surface of the tangled mess of vines you can see in the photo below. This is where the pruners come in handy. I'm not too concerned about next year, they always seem to grow back, so I take the pruners and start cutting. Once you get the first few layers cut away the picking is quite easy. Not to say you don't get a little wounded. I have to wait two or three days between picking for my hands to heal so I can pick again.

Of course you have heard the term 'low hanging fruit'. In the context you heard it, it probably wasn't even talking about fruit. Anyhow, the idea is that the best fruit always seems just out of reach. I have tried various methods of getting at the higher stuff. The first day I backed my four wheeler as far into the bush as I could then stood on it and picked. The next time a friend brought his Kubota and I picked from the loader. Last time I took a ladder. Doesn't matter which method, the biggest, plumpest berries are always just a little out of reach. I always end up taking a few steps out onto the vines. Those old dried vines are generally pretty sturdy, but sometimes not. Once I fell clear through. I felt like 'Brer Rabbit' in his 'laughing place', cept I wasn't laughing.

I don't know why I even pick these darn things. Maybe it's because they make such good pie. Or maybe it's the jam on a piece of buttered toast. Or maybe it's the cobbler I plan to make in the dutch oven. Maybe it's that I just can't stand to see them go to waste. No, I think the greatest reward is the look on someone's face when I give them a bucket full. You can tell right away if they have ever picked blackberries.