topic Re: Do you pick wild berries? in Community Chat

Do you pick wild berries?

Ane1Care — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 04:06:42 GMT

I'm in the Appalachian foothills, literally surrounded by hills and mountains. Every summer brings bountiful berries, from blue to various cluster berries (black, dew, muscadines, rasp, scuppernong, even straw and mock straw). The Parks Service and Game Warden have signs posted in popular areas incouraging folks to pick them to help keep black bears out of the area, but with campers comes food, and poor food storage, or littering and thus bears come close....not to mention most like to camp on river banks where bears fish.

My back yard is met with a forest with a underground spring that feeds a small stream. The other day I came across a blackberry patch already teaming with fruit. While my house is on a small hill and from it to the gate at the wood line is 150 ft, I still want to pick the berries to help keep possible night encounters down.........I know I have wolves, coywolves, and coyotes cut through near the gate, and a few deer but, I've never had any bears... no tracks found or spotted any..., the county cleared out a mountain bike path in there and there's a road about 1,000 yards away from my gate, so daytime issues are nonexistent. At night, though, the woods come alive.

So, do you or have you picked wild berries?

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

HappyDaze — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 04:15:04 GMT

Yes, wild berries grow wild all around me too (blueberries, two kinds of blackberries, etc) and I go pick them all the time with my dogs. Yes, my dogs love to go blackberry picking- they gently pluck them off the blackberry bushes. They are soooo much better than storebought and free- can't beat that.

We do have bears around here, as well as coyotes and mountain lions. I have personally encountered coyotes and mountain lions but not bears (I've seen their tracks though). I don't worry about them. I take the proper precautions.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

Kachina624 — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 05:24:19 GMT

When I was a child living in East Tennessee, I fondly remember our family blackberry picking excursions. The worst of it was the chigger bites. Mom made pies which were devine.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

Tinkrbl44 — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 06:15:55 GMT

When I was a kid, every summer we'd spend time with my grandparents in the Pocono Mountains ... and there were plenty of berries to pick. My sisters got stung by bees a few times and my mother put a stop to it, unless we were carefully supervised. The insects, snakes and all the wildlife certainly weren't going to leave.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

AKgirl2 — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 07:29:26 GMT

@Ane1Care...when I was 10 my mom took my brother and I to Europe to meet our grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins...(my parents came to U.S. after WW11)...while staying at my grandparents home, we would pick strawberries, gooseberries, red currants, blackberries...cherries, plums, peaches, pears as well...dug up potatoes, beets, picked beans...collecting eggs, etc. I can remember every detail, the traveling to Canada from NY to board ship, spending the whole summer waking up to fun and daily adventures. I have my mother and her family to thank for giving a 10 year old kid some of the best experiences and memories of my life...L❤️VE you mom! I hope they continue!

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

Jk9 — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 07:46:07 GMT

I love wild berries and we had a huge stand of wild blackberries here on our farm until some kind of disease killed them. My brother in law still gathers wild blueberries for muffins....Yes our dogs picked the blackberries with us. It was so funny seeing the doxies sniff out the ones to pick. I stood at the edge of the blackberry patch each year and asked the black snake living in them to hide from me...I would never think of hurting him/her but just preferred not to have an encounter. Silly, but I did it each time I picked berries. We still have wild blueberries in our woods but the deer get there first.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

Lilysmom — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 09:24:00 GMT

We had a large field of blackberries next to the garden at my family home. When we were kids, we used to pick them and sell them for .25 cents a quart. Twenty five cents got you on five rides at our exhibition so we thought that was a great price. We also used to sell lilies of the valley. I am happy to say that we have blackberries and lilies of the valley here on our property now as well. The flowers I planted. The blackberries are wild. LM

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

foggy! — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 09:51:25 GMT

Yes we do! We can hardly wait for all the new fresh blackberries and blueberries. Its a fun, local, healthy and inexpensive family outing to go berry picking. They taste so much better than store bought berries, are more plump, more juicy, plus you get all the nutrients right off the bush. Here on the coast, there are about as many cranberry bogs as there are blueberry farms but we're ok with letting Oceanspray have those. Strawberries and raspberries are also wonderful but there are fewer raspberries due to how fragile they are. We never tire of eating blueberries...right out of the huge bowls on the kitchen counter or in pancakes or muffins. They make me feel well and there's nothing quite like that little pop when you first bite into one!

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

qualitygal — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 13:35:08 GMT

Absolutely, blueberries, up at Traverse City, is the cherry capitol. We have apples too!! Love fruit!!!!!! and fresh garden vegetables. We have all sorts of roadside tables selling and we have farmer's markets too. I love the bounty we have here, we're very lucky.

We don't pick blueberries as adults, we did all that as kids. Ate 1/2 of them!!! LOL

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

Yardlie — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:06:03 GMT

We have picked wild berries in the past, but I don't think we will this year. We've had so much rain this year. I hear that the 'sqeeters are terrible out in the country. Usually, they leave me alone, but with that zika virus, I don't want to run the risk...not that I'm planning any more children!

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

goldensrbest — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:18:17 GMT

I found a few wild raspberries last year on a trail i walk on,just a few ,i have memories of my grandmas blackberry cobbler, which i so loved.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

Laura14 — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:23:26 GMT

Best memory as a kid was picking wild blueberries in Jersey. The plants were all over our backyard.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

SilleeMee — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:34:55 GMT

I see wild berries around...but I stay away from them because most of them are poisonous in my parts.

This topic of "berries" brings me back to my hippie-days...peace and love. My dad used to tell me: "You can't move to the mountains, pick berries and live off of love"...so much for the berries, but he was so wrong about the rest!

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

Yardlie — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 14:38:36 GMT

@SilleeMee wrote:
I see wild berries around...but I stay away from them because most of them are poisonous in my parts.

This topic of "berries" brings me back to my hippie-days...peace and love. My dad used to tell me: "You can't move to the mountains, pick berries and live off of love"...so much for the berries, but he was so wrong about the rest!

@SilleeMee, Cute story!

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

debcakes — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 16:13:59 GMT

Yes, I do pick berries, but there are no bears around here. I did come nose to nose with a deer one time.

i have also found that things change through the years. Some areas I picked have been developed and some have simply changed and have grasses, now.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

chickenbutt — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 16:17:43 GMT

I haven't in a million years but, growing up in CA, we always picked blackberries. All you had to do was drive along any road or small highway type road and there were wild blackberry bushes galore.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

RedTop — Thu, 09 Jun 2016 22:45:29 GMT

We do pick blackberries occasionally, if we can get to them first. Between the birds and the bears, the wild berries disappear quickly.

Years ago, my brother and I helped our family pick gallons of huge blackberries every summer. Not long after buying the farm, Grandpa started planting blackberry vines along the edge of the fence line between his land and what later became our property. By the early 60's, those vines were fully matured and were always loaded, and waiting to be picked. We would start early, and pick berries for hours, for days on end, and everything that could be made with a blackberry, my family made it. Berries were frozen for use during the winter months, but we enjoyed fresh berries with sugar and cold milk, cobblers, pies, cakes, milkshakes, jam, syrup, and Grandpa even made blackberry wine.

We used metal paint cans, hung from our belt, to collect our berries, which allowed us to pick with both hands. We would empty our buckets gently into dish pans for our aunt and mom to take back to the house to clean, and start prepping for the recipe of the day. I remember sore, stained fingers, lots of scratches, sunburned necks and being very tired of berries by the time we stripped all those vines. Summer on a farm always meant being alert for snakes, and since we saw them all the time in the barn, corn crib, chicken house, and grainery, we didn't think anything about seeing a black snake in a blackberry vine waiting on a bird to fly down for a snack. We didn't bother them, and they never bothered us.

Grandpas vines eventually all died out by the late 60's, but they kept us busy for a good 7-8 years.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

GingerPeach — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 00:27:54 GMT

We used to pick blackberries alongside backroads in California all the time. I haven't done it for a long time. Birds eat a lot of them, but there aren't any bears around here. Maybe I'll take a drive.

Re: Do you pick wild berries?

febe1 — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 01:24:53 GMT

Lots of good memories of me and my three brothers picking blueberries in pint jars and selling them. I lived in PA until I was 7, so it was before then. I remember just eating so many blueberries, big fat, ripe, firm juicy ones. When I see the price of blueberries today, we could have been rich had they been that price back in the day.