"What's in em mate ?"
Was the question that was put to me as I was snacking on blackberries mid ride this morning.
We bumped into two middle aged scouse blokes halfway around Delamere who were horrified that we were eating things growing at the side of the trail. I explained they were berries / fruit and they should try them as they could spit them out if they didn't like the taste. But the question flummoxed me, I did try and explain "probably fructose sugars" but was a bit thrown by the fact that they had never eaten them before
They then insisted on filming us go down a steep gully (as it was not possible) but we had to wait for a few minutes while they got their phones set up 😁.
Hopefully made their day !
Everything comes from supermarkets these days. One of the reasons I grow some fruit and used to do veg in the garden is so the kids can help themselves and they see that not everything originates in wee plastic tubs.
Having said that how can adults not know what blackberries are!
I was expecting a retro phone question not this weird exchange
One of MY favourites amongst golden kiwis and persimmon
"Should have ninja swipped them with your chain ring"
Biggest shock is that there’s a steep gully in Delemere?
Is this the one with the jump at the bottom right?
As an adopted middle aged scouser I can completely see where they’re coming from. The only fruit we had growing up was apples, banana’s and tangerines. My mum and dad still see blackberry’s and the like as being exotic!
Quite often small white caterpillars!
Challenged my assumptions !
More vitamin C per weight than just about anything else you'd want to eat, IIRC. Rosehips might more.
Only advice is only eat the ones higher up.
Only advice is only eat the ones higher up.
good advice for any wild fruit
Berries of colour have a multitude of plant compounds which may provide health benefits, including promoting oral health:
One of the reasons I grow some fruit and used to do veg in the garden is so the kids can help themselves and they see that not everything originates in wee plastic tubs.
A guy I used to work with in Birmingham moved to rural Suffolk and was amazed to discover that farmers just leave food lying about in fields unguarded - carrots, potatoes, everything, in fields just sitting there. Not even a fence around them.
Annoying little seeds that break up and get stuck in your teeth. Grrrr.
I still get taken out to pick 'em as apparently, being tall, I can "reach the high ones." More grrrr.
By proportion - a large volume of water.
I can’t believe anyone, inner city urbanite or not, doesn’t know what a blackberry is. They grow everywhere like weeds, even in the centre of Liverpool I’ll bet.
Also, what an amazingly bumper year it is for blackberries!
[pedant mode]blackberries aren’t berries they’re an aggregate fruit formed of drupelets[pendent mode/]
Yes quiet often small maggots. The other day at work on break time while colleagues were busy being 'G's etc etc etc, I found an excellent crop of blackberries on the roadside (a quiet road) which I scoffed a nice few of. Also on the foraging theme, there seems to be a lot of walnut trees springing up round my way recently.
I picked 2.5kg of them the other week and it’s currently bubbling away and tuning into 12 bottles of rather nice wine if last years is anything to go by. I’ve got another 2.5kg in the freezer that I’ll make later on this year. Never seen maggots on them though.
DROOOOOOOL...
Plus what's Liverfunkinfool gotta do with blackberries?
Seems to be one of the joys of plenty of sunshine, an early crop of Blackberries. It's not only people from cities that are disconnected from the natural world; came across a Prunus domestica cultivar with a nice crop whilst inspecting the trees of a small Oxfordshire village, one of the residents stopped me to ask what I was eating as they thought it was a Crab Apple and so inedible. Cherry Plums seem to be abundant too, probably easier to find in the urban environment.
There’s a little cul de sac road I take walking into town, and part of it runs alongside a railway embankment. Masses of blackberries grow along the fence, some the size of my thumbnail, and very sweet and juicy. I take advantage while walking past to pick as big a handful as I can, and munch on them as I walk. Nature’s free bounty.
None here yet but it looks like a good year for it. I've got a mate who just cannot comprehend eating food straight from the plant, let alone from wild plants, it's shops or nothing. And I thought that was what was happening when another friend said, "you're not going to eat those are you"? But no, she'd realised I was at the spot where all the mountain bikers stop to piss
Love Plums too!
Mmmmmm
P.s. used to know someone who ate kiwis whole skin and all 😱
It's a trap this isn't it eh eh....
D'oh !
That's just not cricket Chester ;d
Used to spend hours out with the dogs bramble picking on the farm tracks when I was younger. Mum had a business selling preserves through farmers markets and little twee boutique-y shops and bramble jelly was a big seller...
Biggest brambles I've ever seen growing anywhere were at the Vintage Excavator Trusts place at the quarry at Threlkeld (up by where the ****ing massive digger is). Pretty sure rust and pollution are the perfect fertiliser for them 😆
Apparently my son freaked his friends out by eating brambles when he saw some in a park they were in last week.
We have some hilarious photos of when he was maybe only a year old sitting in a bilberry patch totally covered in purple juice from them.
Raspberries, wild strawberry, gooseberry, elderberries, bilberries and brambles are common where we wander at home.
A highlight of our camping trip to Norway a few years back was munching wild strawberries and raspberries as we walked.
It's hard to get your head around how disconnected with nature a growing number of people are.
At work it's one of our main focuses - there's not much point in talking global climate change, biodiversity loss and similar unless people understand thier own local nature. To care about something, you have to have experienced it, to understand something you have to care about it.
I've grown up browsing my way around the countryside, as have my kids now
https://flic.kr/p/2ZNuAc
"Oi look dad you better eat this or else"
😊
All the blackberry bushes we pick from on the camper storage site burned down in the wild fires last month. They have started reappearing in the still scorched banking. We are still waiting on the French to go back to work after their holidays to get a quote for the repairs to the van. Till then filler and duct tape is keeping the wonky van on the road
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We may get a late harvest
The blackberry haul in Shropshire and Wales is ridiculous at the moment. Over at Bury Ditches the other day and we ended up in the centre of what looked like a few acres of the juiciest, tastiest blackberries. You could spend days picking them and barely make a dint 🙂
Top tip from my ma, tip the blackberries into a sink of fairly light salt water for a few mins… the maggot critters come out pretty much straight away and sink to the bottom. I did make the point that if I was bringing them home they were likely to go into a pie or jam and I was therefore less bothered about tiny maggots… not exactly a useful tip trailside but might be good for those a bit more squeamish.
Edit: obviously give them a quick rinse in clean water afterwards!
It’s surprising how many people are puzzled when you forage fruit and eat them in front of them. I guess it’s jsut people are brought up in different ways. i was shown by my parents and grandparents the various bushes and trees you can eat.
End with that my mother was surprised when I was eating buckthorn whilst on a walk. I can only put that down to she grew up no where near the coast, only went there on an occasional holiday as a child.
It’s surprising how many people are puzzled when you forage fruit and eat them in front of them. I guess it’s jsut people are brought up in different ways.
They're going to shit themselves when they find out where sausages come from.
Judging by the taste of the one I just ate, some kind of small insect. Extra protein.
blackberries are what you put in spirits and make hedge wine/bramble whisky
Kayaking on the canal this week, we commented that we'll need to bring canoes next week, for harvesting. Most of the banks are inaccessible to anyone else.
Picked about 10lb yesterday, jam is in the making. A particularly good crop around this year.
P.s. used to know someone who ate kiwis whole skin and all 😱
I was once told by a very nice young lady from the New Zealand tourism board that the proper way to eat kiwi fruit is to rub 2 together until all the hairs have come off and then tuck in, skin and all.
Kayaking on the canal this week, we commented that we’ll need to bring canoes next week, for harvesting. Most of the banks are inaccessible to anyone else.
Which reminds me of one of our top damson spots on the Teith... 😎
Quite right Pinkster- he did rub the hairs off and then proceed to make me wince in horror
I was once told by a very nice young lady from the New Zealand tourism board that the proper way to eat kiwi fruit is to rub 2 together until all the hairs have come off and then tuck in, skin and all.
That's a euphemism, right?
