First Blackberrying of the Year

After walking the dogs this afternoon, I walked over to the blackberry bramble at the edge of my pasture and looked over the current crop.  I picked a few, just a small handful, and came back inside.  Chewie, being Chewie, watched me pick the berries and eat them, and he started nibbling them off the bushes.  I laughed at him, and he stopped long enough to give me a giant toothy grin before returning to his efforts.  He's a strange dog, but he's all mine.

After dinner, I kept thinking about the blackberries. I decided that I would go up to our country place tomorrow and see if the brambles there were bearing yet.  Then I looked up some recipes on Pinterest.  This led to combing through my Granny's recipe box looking for her cobbler recipe.  I realized that I had to have more and that I didn't want to wait.

The beauty of summer is that the days linger gloriously.  Even though it was fairly late, the tops of the trees were still golden. Grabbing a leash and Chewie, I headed out to our place in the country and the tons and tons of blackberries that grow there. Chewie loves it there.  I had the windows down, and as soon as we came around the last curve before the gate to the property, he sniffed the air and started woofing softly.  We made our way down to the brambles, and I picked until it got too dark to ensure I wasn't about to step in the middle of a snake. Chewie and I found our way back to the car in the last blue-purple light of sunset and the dim glow of a fingernail moon.

Blackberries are tricky and imperious little devils.  They are not a "something for nothing" fruit.  There is nothing docile or generous about them.  They're primadonnas.    If you go to pick what they have produced, they are going to take from you as well.  Usually I get hung on one of the vines and cut my arm or hand open. I have always thought of it as the "blood sacrifice" required to complete the picking. Today, as I carefully reached around the thorns and plucked the ripe berries, I felt the waving tendrils of green grab at my shorts, tenaciously hook my tshirt, and finally one reached out and snagged a handful of my hair. It was surprisingly strong, and it required a little careful finesse to free myself.  If you flail once a bramble captures you, it's kind of like that plant Devil's Snare from Harry Potter - more and more of them grab hold making the situation worse. Once I managed to extricate myself, I apparently had paid my tithe.  Nothing else attacked me.

Chewie watched the whole thing from a safe distance.  He ran careful circles around the reach of the brambles, caused a large wild turkey to explode upwards into the treetops with a sound like a localized hurricane, rolled rapturously in the tall grass, and wore his nose off chasing scents.  Eventually, he flopped down and watched me, moving only when I went to another section of the bramble.  I offered him a berry I'd picked, but he apparently had his fill earlier.  He sniffed it, mouthed it, and spit it out before looking up at me with a hopeful wagging tail.  Apparently, he's decided he'd rather have his bacon treats instead.

In a fairly short time, I managed to fill a quarter of the gallon-sized ziplock bag I'd taken with me.  I brought the berries home, washed them, and put them in the refrigerator.  I don't know what I'll do with them.  I might indulge in one of the recipes I found.  I might make a mini-cobbler.  Probably, though, I'll just nibble them whole and savor that special taste of summer and home and deep woods pasture land.  That is probably special enough a recipe all on its own.