I just got back from walking my fur baby. Usually my sweetie takes all our babies for a nightly walk, today for some reason I wanted to get outside for awhile. Anyway, I live in the woods down a long dirt road and today I found huge banks of blackberry bushes. They are taller than I am and just loaded with berries. I am new to living in the country, only been here a year. I want to pick them, but my question is, Is it ok to eat them and what can I do with them?

Blackberry cobbler-yum. Look at Eleanor Burns recipe for cobbler, it is on her website, the recipe looks easy and good.

Wish I had some to pick Best cobbler there is

blackberries in a bowl, lil sugar and pour on some cold milk. great snack anytime!!

Jam is very easy to make. Just get some Sure-Jell at the grocery store (I like the light variety because it uses much less sugar) and you can get canning jars at the grocery store too. No jam can be fresher than picking them in the yard and immediately cooking them down. MMMMMM! :thumbup:

P.S. The berries you want to use are the ones that easily fall off their "stem" when you touch them. If you have to really pull them off, they're not ripe enough.

hope you don't get chiggers ;-)

I just made a bunch of blackberry jam. Just be careful when you pick them, wear long sleeves and long pants. You cna get chiggers. they are a little bug that you can't see and they get under your skin and itch. I got them picking berries in Ohio when I was little.

Oh, I love those! We call them black caps here. I use them in muffins, on cereal, kids love them on ice cream and in shakes.

They are great w/ alil sugar & milk. They are not ripe here yet but the bushes are getting full. Can't hardly wait.

yes, be careful of chiggers and red spider mites, and of course poison ivy, but it would be fun to pick the berries and eat them fresh,

I love blackberries - but ours don't ripen until summertime - mine don't even have green hard berries yet - I would be surprised that they are ripe now.

You can put a couple tablespoons of lemon water a little sweetner of your choice in a quart freezer ziplock bag- fill 2/3rds fill with berries. Close, with as little air in bag as possible-turn several times to distribute lemon water and sweetner, pop in the freezer and viola! summer berries in the winter! Also blackberry chutney or salsa with fish or chicken yum!

what a find go for it u can make cobbler, jelly and ice cream and find new friends just let all u friends know u have a place to pick theme and they will come runing i know i would

Seems early for blackberries. They don't ripen here until around the 4th of July.

You can layer them on a cookie sheet and freeze them, doesn't take very long. Pour frozen berries in freezer ziplock bag and keep. This way your berries won't be all stuck together and you can easily pour them out in a measuring cup when needed. One thing I have to admit I learned from Martha Stewart.

I don't know anything about where you live but I would be worried about bears if you are in the bush. Maybe they don't live near there.

That's my son's trick with blueberries!

Bramble(blackberries) and apple crumble. Brambles, apple slices, brown sugar to taste and a spoonful of water, covered with crumble mixture:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
6 tablespoons chilled butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Sprinkle on top and cook at 350 for about half an hour

YUM

Blackberry Cobbler - one of my favorites from my youth in Kansas. I just purchased some frozen ones and eat them with cream or whip cream. Also great on cereal. You can also use them in a fruit salad. Great topping for ice cream also. Wish I was there.

We don't have bears but we do have snakes, so make a lot of noise. The snakes will take off. My DH is a berry picken fool. Down here we call chiggers ,
redbugs. And do they itch. If you get bit just use nail polish to brush on the bite. It cuts of the bug's oxygen and he dies. But don't let any of this stop you.They are wonderful.

Oh man! I want some for cobbler! Sounds good.

Oh Yum our do not get ripe till about August. Jam is good! or jelly if you can not tolerate seeds. Evaporated milk and sugar on them in a bowl for a snack!

I love to make blackberry jelly, because I don't like the seeds in jam. It is easy to make. Our berries here are just blooming.

Here in Alabama we have two types of blackberries...the first kind we call Dewberries and they get ripe first. Actually they are about to quit bearing soon. They grow close to the ground and are often plumper and juicier than the regular blackberries. They are often about knee high or shorter.
The regular blackberries aren't ripe yet but will be pretty soon and those can bear until over into late June.
We don't have bears here but wild hogs and coyotes are possibilities as well as snakes and ticks. LOL
So, be sure to watch where you step, dress in long sleeves to keep from being scratched by the thorns, and pick earlier in the day to avoid the heat.
Those tall, headhigh plants are the regular blackberry and they are great to eat as soon as they are black and somewhat soft. Enjoy!!

Black berries are great do all the above you can even make syrup for your pancakes. Ours haven't bloomed yet When we pick wild we have to watch for bears, they like them as much as we do!

Wear long sleeves like they say. Long denim pants with high boots. Take a piece of rope to tie the bucket around your waist so you can pick with both hands. Take heavy gloves, leather for preference, but I mostly grab the vines with one hand in the glove and pick with the ungloved one. That way I can pick lots of berries rapidly. Take large flat boxes from grocery store to put them in from the bucket, GENTLY. I'm talking about car picking here, but if close to home carry them gently and use 2 buckets so they won't squash with so much weight on the bottom ones.

Dunk gently into water at home and drain, I use a round, new fat spatter guard from the dollar store to dunk them and drain them fast. Spread on a cookie sheet like others say and freeze, then put into plastic bags/boxes/or the "suck the air out" protective bags and they will stay frozen till wanted. You'll be amazed at how many berries a small family can get through during the winter. And the jams/jellies make marvelous gifts.

[quote=Gramie bj]Black berries are great do all the above you can even make syrup for your pancakes.
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My sister and I have a system for making all that. We make our jellies and jams and let them set till the lids are down, fully sealed. After a few days, THEN we label them. If the jelly is firm, it's labeled JELLY. If the jelly is sealed and yet liquid, we label it as BLACK BERRY SYRUP.

Works every time.

If they are alongside a road taste a few of them first, as they can pick up the taste of car exhaust :wink:

We have black caps and black berries here. The black berries are bigger than a raspberry and the black caps are smaller than a raspberry.

No way I'd step in the grass around a blackberry bush without lot of repellent spray on. You are going to be eat up with chiggers if you don't use Deep Woods Off.

Okay I read all of the replies and no one addressed MY biggest concern. Spraying. If the berries are on private property, I would highly recommend you check with the property owner and make sure that he/she didn't spray Roundup or some other poison on the bushes (also make sure it's okay for you to be on the property). If it's county or municipal property, ESPECIALLY roadside berries, check with them for spray schedules and locations. Our county does a LOT of spraying on the blackberries here.

I eat mine right off the bramble -- but no spraying is done on my propery. Mine are in bloom right now, so I should have plenty next month.

yummy will need to go and look up her recipe, thanks

http://www.quiltinaday.com/freepatte...ler_recipe.pdf

Absolutely fine to eat them! I'm a dedicated forager and eat stuff from the wild all the time. What to do with them? Here are a few suggestions:
Jam
Juice
Dehydrate and use in cereal, pancakes, muffins
Freeze them and make sorbet, smoothies, whatever!
Wine!
More wine!
Last year I made a small batch (one gallon) of wine from wild raspberries and strawberries. It was the BEST dessert wine ever. Blackberries would make fabulous wine.

I haven't gathered black berries but I have gotten chiggars and I would rather have just about anything else!!! They nestle into your skin in areas where you had tight fitting clothes (think pantie and bra elastic) and they will itch you right out of your sanity for days. I have tried every home remedy and store-bought cure out there and so far the only thing that has ever worked for me is time--way too much time. So the suggestion for Deep Woods Off is right on!

Not only chiggars, but watch out for black snakes that love to nest in brambles. I should have mentioned that when we go foraging, I always wear boots. If I'm going into deep woods, we have paper suits -- made for industrial use or painters. They're under $1 and they will save you from ticks, chiggars, and poison ivy, too.

Thanks for a neat idea. Ours are only in the blossom stage right now, but I am living in the midst of about 100 acres of blackberry bushes, me and Mama bear with three cubs, yes, three. We didn't believe our eyes the first few times we saw them, but there are three of them. Plenty of berries for all if she stays on her end of the ridge.

Blackberries are very good and healthy. I used to make jelly, jam, pies, (some make blackberry wine) add them anywhere you want them Children like them on peanut butter sandwiches. (put peanut butter on both slices of bread for so they don't fall out. You can freeze them as they are for later use. Don't wash them before you freeze them, do it before you use them if they aren't "clean". Don't pick them when they are wet or the bushes will develop "rust". You can also set out thornless black berry bushes. They are wonderful and larger than the wild ones. They are milder in taste than wild blackberries. I like the wild ones for jelly. Enjoy

Yes, pick them and enjoy. Are they ripe already? Up here they don't ripen for about 6 weeks.

About the bear. I hope she does stay on her end. That is a dangerous situation. I think you need to talk with a park ranger of some kind immediately. Bears are tempermental and very dangerous. I cannot say that enough. They may have already
explored your property! They can be in a house in a minute. I'm not an alarmist (?) but I am concerned about you. They will move on when the food is gone but they will be back.

Watch out for "packsaddles" also. I've never seen one but they can bite or sting which ever they do and it is soooo painful.
Does anyone know what a packsaddle is and what they look like? I've only been on their receiving end while picking blackberries.