Himalayan Blackberry Warriors

Blackberry season came early this year! Wa-hoo.

Anyone from Vancouver is familiar with the invasive Himalayan blackberry vines that take over every sunny hedgerow, schoolyard perimeter, beach access pathway, railway-track siding...you get the picture.

 The downside, as a gardener, is a lot of Indiana-Jones-style battling with thorny blackberry monsters that launch ground-seeking whips, often arcing overhead, into new territory.

Sounds daunting, until you check out last Saturday's haul from housemate Jordana and my 2.5-hr pick-a-thon around one school playing field... That's a whole lotta blackberries :) We even took ski poles to pull down branches that were out of reach. Serious.

So these all got washed, drained, spread on cookie sheets and frozen, than poured into zip-locks and packed into the freezer. We have plans for crumbles, pie, chia-seed/no-sugar refrigerator jam, and blackberry wine....o ya, that sounds good.

 As I recall from my pioneer-style childhood (thanks mom, I think), food preservation takes way more patience than the initial pick-a-thon, and just as much--or more--time. For years, I raised an eyebrow when people of my generation and younger got all whimsical about wanting to preserve/can the old-timey way. What? Spend your whole summer picking, cleaning, chopping, boiling jars, stirring, straining, pouring etc. etc. until you never want to see another bean/tomato/plum/cucumber/peach/ you-name-it again?

We do forget, in our ready-made food lives, that entire summers used to be set aside for preserving food for the winter and it was not glamorous, and usually involved a wood stove in the heat of the summer and some sense of slavery on the part of whoever did it. Funny, that's how we did it when I was a kid.

Now, we can make preserves as a kind of Pioneer Therapy, to feel just connected enough to our food without having to cut into our entertaining lifestyles. My home garden is, for example, just enough to have fresh veggies through the growing season but not enough to actually have to pickle anything. That would be craziness.

So why the heck am I out picking gallons of blackberries?? What's going on.

I even got grumpy tonight because the great big job of freezing the blackberries was not finished and I saw one blackberry in the enormous pot in the fridge starting to mold (one day later...I'm writing late Sunday eve). My pioneer instinct kicked in, while the homies watched a movie--a really awful horror-sounding one that was wrecking my Laura Ingalls vibe man. 'C'mon,' I said to them, 'this is about survival.' Jordana replied 'I want to survive. Just not right now.'

So ya, it's nice that we have the option.

I finished the blackberries...after not very politely asking them to turn down their Sunday-wrecking soundtrack--for which I apologized later, while also making mental notes about how being all pioneer-y is over-rated. Funny thing is, whether you're sweating over a wood stove or navigating another episode of Communal Living, those blackberries are going to taste darn good in the middle of winter.