We were on our way home from church 2 weeks ago when my 5 year old spotted them. “BLACKBERRIES!!” he screamed and we stopped. There were so many, at least 500 feet of bushes packed with berries with branches more than 7 feet tall! My daughter wore her Easter bonnet to church. We grabbed it, lined it with napkins, and filled it to the brim, actually it overflowed! Those are the berries we kept, we all gobbled quite a few as we picked them. They looked and taste way better than the berries found in stores. You can’t get any closer to “all natural” than berries found in nature. We didn’t even make a dent in the vast amount of berries, thousands were falling to the ground and from what we could reach, there was triple that amount of berries deep in the un-reachable bushes.
At home, Elijah helped me wash the berries. We sprinkled on some sugar and chilled them in the fridge.
You can’t get any more “all natural” than finding berries in the wild. Some of my best memories as a child was going to my grandma’s house to pick blackberries! We always debated over whether to eat them with sugar on top or have grandma bake a pie! We usually eat them right away because we couldn’t wait!
Now we had a decision to make. What to do with all of our all natural blackberries?! Should we bake a pie or eat them fresh, we actually all agreed on eating them fresh. They were so delicious!
Like clockwork, after church last Sunday, we spotted the berries again. This time there were even MORE ripe, plump, sinfully delicious blackberries begging to be picked.
We were up in Sandusky the day before where we had stopped for large pops at Circle K. They were empty now and the perfect container for our berries. It looks like other people found our perfect berry picking spot as many were taken and even paths made to get right into the impossible-to-reach berries. There was still an enormous amount of berries. Now, the poor berry branches are full and so heavy that they are falling down to the ground. Many berries have fallen to the ground. 🙁 This time, we filled a 42oz cup, and 2 32 oz cups with berries! We picked 78 ounces of berries, plenty enough for a pie!
I make the perfect pie crust, straight from Pillsbury! Actually, they have good coupons here. We had a loaded pie shell of berries. Notice that Elijah couldn’t resist and is posing with a blackberry stuck to his front teeth!
We are not patient when it comes to eating blackberries and this is even more so the truth when it comes to blackberry pie. Although you should wait to cut the pie until it cools, we chose to dive right in to the warm blackberry goodness, a little wet but still quite yummy. Even better with a scoop of ice cream on top. This all natural dessert taste even better since we picked them straight out of nature.
Now, I’m not 100% sure of the policy on blackberry picking at this unnamed park, so I can’t share with you where this fabulous place for berries is located.
Do you pick fresh fruit in the summer? If so, where and what?
I’ll bet that was a lot of fun!
Too bad you can’t post the patch. I was thinking I’d hope you’d post the address, then reading your last sentence, all I thought was bummer!
Looks like you guys had a great time. They look delicious!