Blackberries

We want to become self-sufficient in fruit and veg and wine. Blackberries are great for jams, crumbles and wine. I'm currently using the last jar of apple and blackberry jam from last year.

We can make jams and wines from various fruits, but they're not all easy to get hold of. We had just one plum on our plum tree this year and the roadside plum trees don't have many plums either. That means only 2 gallons of plum wine and no plum jam. Fortunately, brambles grow everywhere, so we should be able to get loads of blackberries.

I've set myself a target of 20 gallons of blackberry wine, 10 jars of apple and blackberry jam, and a handful of blackberries to throw in apple crumbles. I'll need something ridiculous like 75-100lbs of blackberries.


We picked just over 3lbs of blackberries from the mother-in-law's garden at the weekend. They're now in a bucket, slowly turning into wine. That's a good start!

My son came out blackberry picking with me this morning. We went to the usual spot on the common, only to find virtually nothing. It looks like the brambles had been cut down early this year. Lots of nettles growing where the blackberries were. I normally visit there once a year and pick several pounds of blackberries, but today we got just a handful. We walked over a mile on the common and still managed only about 5oz.

Fortunately we found two small spots on our street where the brambles had grown over the fence, so managed another half a pound from each place. I've now frozen them all.

Ho hum ....