Wild Blackberry Pie
There were two columns in the Observer this week that grabbed my attention. One was by Kathleen Sayce about blackberries and the other, by Victoria Stoppiello, had to do with raising cattle and changing paradigms.
It was the headline of Kathleen’s article – “Plant blackberries now for headstart on next year” – that gave me pause. PLANT blackberries? Here? On the Peninsula? That particular endeavor would never have occurred to me in a gazillion years. But, come to think of it, the blackberry bushes of my childhood have all but disappeared. We have mowed the meadows and sanitized the verges to the point that our neat-and-tidy surroundings offer nothing but daffodils and flowering fruit trees and other eye-candy.
Sydney and Pete and Blackberries, 1938
The ‘wild’ blackberries (Pacific blackberries, says Kathleen) that used to crawl along the edges of the roads and lanes were usually the first to ripen and you had to be alert to get them ahead of the birds and other critters. They were the best for pies. The ‘evergreens’ and ‘Himalayas’ came on later in the summer and grew on gigantic bushes everywhere. Nowadays, many of the choice blackberry areas of sixty or seventy years ago are long forgotten – the brambles gone with lovely homes and gardens in their place.
Victoria talked about ‘old’ and ‘new’ methods of raising cattle. She, too, referred to one of Kathleen’s earlier columns which described the benefits of cow manure as an amender to the soil in old-fashioned farming. Victoria compared the techniques of two dairy farmers in dealing with pasture management – a lead-in to her discussion of how we humans develop different approaches. What are the conditions that encourage adoption of a new paradigm? she asks.
Well, here in our household the condition that is prompting the possibility of planting (!) blackberries is the desire to rectify a little of the ever-creeping effect of population growth. I can’t really bear the thought that we are becoming suburbanized. In fact, without an urban area nearby, that doesn’t even make sense. But I don’t think we’re really rural anymore. Not without the blackberries and cow pies in the meadows. Or so it seems to this old duck.
This reminds me of summers I spent at my folks in Olympia during my college years while working a summer job. In July Mom and I would just go out in the woods behind the house and pick the Cascade/Pacific blackberries (Rubus ursinus)—the scientific name pays tribute to the black bear, which loves to eat ’em. Since they were not very plentiful I also picked red huckleberries (Vaccinium parvifolium), which were ripe at the same time, and we discovered quite by accident that half blackberries and half red huckleberries made an excellent pie filling, and quite colorful to boot with the contrasting red and black. Nowadays, where I live in Virginia I pick the local wild Allegheny blackberries (Rubus allegheniensis) just walking distance from my house in a cleared area under the power lines. Actually I prefer the taste of the wild Eastern black raspberries (Rubus occidentalis) which are found in the same area, though they are not nearly as plentiful (this year I got 6 pints of the raspberries and about 4.5 gallons of the blackberries). Interestingly, it is Rubus occidentalis that is the basis of cultivars grown commercially in the Willamette Valley, rather that the Western black raspberry (Rubus leucodermis). Right now we are toward the end of the season for wild persimmons (Diospyros virginiana)—gotta watch out for the unripe ones as they make your mouth pucker!