BLACKBERRIES.....

 "I ate mythology and dreamt of blackberries..." -― Yusef Komunyakaa

 Growing up  we picked blackberries every summer. Especially in  late August, before school got back in.My mother would don her  railroad engineer overalls with the blue pinstripes, tie her hair up in a kerchief, shove the old wooden ladder in the Dodge, pails and buckets and we'd trundle out to the far end of Victoria ( the far end THEN was near Hillside Road.)

  There was an old church there, the last of its kind, with an empty lot, covered with  brambles. My mother would  stick that old ladder on  mountains of thorns,  climb up with a pail, and she and I would pick blackberries. (She would pick. I would eat.)  My mother would undo her long kerchief, tie it  around the full pail  and lower it down to me. Then she would  tie up her hair again and continue picking. Then repeat the process.

For hours we picked. Filling pails and buckets. our hands stained , our cheeks stained with blackberry juice.  For years we did this. Till one year, before I headed to Grad school, we toodled out to our  bramble patch and it was gone. A parking lot stood in its stead. The blackberries paved under. That year she had one bag of frozen berries from the year before. Blackberry cream pie. Open baked pastry, custard on the bottom, fresh blackberries on the top, whip cream piled on top of that..........oh yum.

 This year, there were beautiful local bramble berries from a farm. A lot of  blackberry patches I've picked in the area have been taken down.Still some by the road, but  the cars zoom by and it's noisy and dirty. So have taken to getting farm berries. They're beautiful. 

 BLACKBERRY COMPOTE ( this is good as freezer jam, or on ice cream, or on a cream pie, or tarts, or just to scoop up and eat AS IS) I double this by the way....

  4 cups blackberries ( give or take....I don't worry if it's a bit more)
5 cups sugar ( that's 2 cups less than the original recipe. You can use stevia or whatever. But I detest stevia)
2 pouches Freezer jam pectin ( liquid or powdered)
4 tsps lemon juice.

 Blackberries were discovered  in the HARALDSKAER  WOMAN ( Jutland ,Denmark bog) from 490 B.C. She had consumed blackberries before she died.

 Greeks used to brew the leaves for a tea, or chew the leaves to prevent gingivitis. Roots to helped intestinal problems,and the fruit was used to prevent scurvy.

 Squish up the all the ingredients in a big, big bowl. You might want to use a pastry cutter. I used a large fork as well, and if you use frozen berries you might want to  thaw in microwave  for a big, or on counter. 

 Leave quite a few larger berries.....I wouldn't over mix. 

 It should end up like this. Great to freeze in small containers. I have one container in the fridge right now that I can use up for a couple of days.......

 In 1696 it was documented   blackberry cordials were used as medicinal drinks. In 1771 stomach ulcers were treated with blackberry cordial, or fresh fruits, or bramble wine.The juice used to dye fabric and flexible canes to make rope.

 “Blackberries seize the land, gobbling acres, blanketing banks, consuming abandoned farmhouses and their Studebakers and anything left alone in the rain for five minutes or longer.” 
― Robert Michael Pyle, Sky Time in Gray's River: Living for Keeps in a Forgotten Place

 Another  story says the brambles from the Blackberry were used to make the crown of Thorns........

My mother would serve this on scones for tea, crustless toast, pound cake, on cream pies, angel food cake.....but my favourite is to ladle it over vanilla ice cream.  That was the prime treat when we got back from picking. All those years ago in that wild blackberry  patch, my mother in her pinstrip overalls, hands stained , and  pails of blackberries  at our feet.....

 Photographs 2019