It’s nice when interests coincide. Behind one goal at Atherton Laburnum Rovers’ Crilly Park stadium, there was growing today a whole run of plump, ripe blackberries, of which this was just a small part. Luckily for me I had a collection vessel, which was definitely filled before I settled in to watch the game.
You might have noticed that a nice round number approaches, in terms of the number of days I have been doing this. But that’s for tomorrow.
Ahhh. Rubus plicatus, one of the countryside’s great free bounties. They have found evidence in the stomachs of prehistoric peat bog victims that we’ve been eating these beauties for thousands of years. Who am I to go against such tradition.
So many blackberries. So little freezer space. This clump dangles tantalisingly off the wall at the end of Victoria Road, ten feet up; no one can pick them. But then again so much of this free bounty remains unharvested at the end of a summer; and so in November, the shops feel it’s OK to sell the imports from Guatemala. What a waste…
Wilfully ignoring the political developments of the day — let’s photograph some food instead. Two days after being picked, these blueberries have darkened to become indistinguishable, colour-wise, from the blackberries tossed in the bowl with them. Add some sugar and cream, and eat to forget.
Each year I have done this a picture has appeared of the blackberry bounty, and that provides a chance to measure its position in the year. They are early this year, probably unsurprisingly, but not as early as 2014. Either way there has been a sudden ripening (blackening) of thousands of them in the last week or so. I went hunter-gathering today. The stump in the background is Heptonstall Church, by the way.
As August winds down each year there are some regular events, firstly, I get a year older and so the title of this blog becomes one more year out of date — that’s coming on Friday. To ease the pain of this, however, the garden finally begins to pay off. Blackberries, blueberries and rhubarb in this shot, with apples and plums gathered but unseen here (we have realised fruit is much less hassle than vegetables). There must be a photo like this every year around this time, and hopefully that isn’t going to change however far I take this blog.
Always a pleasing event of the year. Not many blackberries around yet, but they will come. Plums… for us will, I hope, be just as much in glut as they were two years ago. Believe me, if you live in Hebden Bridge and want cheap plums, give us a couple of weeks, we will be overflowing.
Ah, free food. Come to daddy.
They’re early this year but then again so has everything been, since February. And who needs barbed wire when you have a stand of brambles to protect your property.
To say it’s been a good year for blackberries does not even start to do it justice. If it’s possible to become addicted to these beauties then get me into rehab, I’m a terminal case.
Incidentally, it seems that the bloke I got a picture of on Saturday isn’t Edgar Davids at all. Whoops… sorry…
Why would anyone in Britain buy blackberries at this time of year? Why would anyone equipped with a freezer and a few hours on a September morning have to buy them at any time of year? Particularly ones shipped in from Mexico, which, unbelievably, I have seen on offer in our local stores in the middle of a British autumn. I cannot think of a more ridiculous illustration of how we have utterly f***ed up food production and its relationship to our long-term survival.
I also like blackberries. Particularly in a pie.
Being 42 