Blackberries in Seattle
They’re growing everywhere! Like weeds, except edible and oh, so tasty! It’s incredible. You don’t have to hunt to find them, you don’t need a secret spot, you just need to walk for a couple of minutes in any direction with a bucket in hand. And when you get there, you barely even have to put any effort toward getting them. A quart in ten minutes or less. You just ask the brambles, “could I have some berries, please?” and they gracefully lower their branches of their own accord toward the awaiting mouth of your container and the berries drop gently into it and it’s overflowing before you realize it with the largest, juiciest, sweetest berries around. It’s fantastic!
And yet somehow at Pike’s Market every produce place was selling berries for $3 per half pint.
August 27th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
Our blackberries peaked about two weeks ago, and we don’t have those magic bushes that give up the berries at your command.
When I go out foraging for wild berries it takes me about an hour to collect a quart, and at current prices I would have to charge $14 for them if I was going to sell them at the farmers market.
Luckily, I keep them all for myself (and share some with my family and friends) because they don’t get any better than fresh-picked from our forest!!
A once-per-year treat in our neck of Pennsylvania (of course the wild berries change with the seasons, wild strawberries first, then red raspberries, then a mix of red and black and then the blackberries and then Elderberries . . . what’s next? It has yet to shown itself, but I’ll be looking . . . That’s magic enough for me!!
August 31st, 2007 at 11:01 am
Welcome to Seattle.