Having a Berry Good Time
Dewberries on a vine.
Our fingertips are stained purple and scratches are all over our hands. Can you guess what we did Sunday afternoon? That’s right, we picked dewberries. I could not believe that some of the wild dewberries were ripe so early in the year. Only the ones growing along fence lines are ripe. The ones growing in low-lying patches around the pastures have just finished blooming; therefore, they are not near ready to pick. Luckily, our family loves berries.
They are very sweet and juicy. The berries are excellent raw by themselves or on hot or cold cereal. They make great cobblers and excellent jams. The latter is my absolute favorite! Dewberry jam is delicious on English muffins, toast, and even as a topping on oatmeal pancakes. The berries are a deep, rich purple color. Like most berries they are first green, then they turn red, until they finally ripen to a deep purple color. The ripest ones are almost black and burst with flowing juices when touched.
Dewberries freeze well. Wash them and place on a cookie sheet. Put the cookie sheet in the freezer so the berries will freeze separately. When they are frozen, put them in a plastic freezer-safe bag. Seal it and label it with the date. Then you can enjoy the flavor of dewberries year round.
Kyla picking berries.
There are some dangers when picking dewberries. Snakes are our most worrisome danger. In Texas we have many poisonous snakes. Meeting with them in the berry patches are always a concern. To help protect us from snakes, we always wear closed toe shoes. It is better to also wear long pants, but honestly in the Texas sun it is hard to insist your children wear them. Berry pickers also must carry a long stick with them. Before reaching into the tangled vines for a big, ripe berry, we poke the stick in first. We also like to make noise while picking to let anything and everything know that we are in the area. This is the easiest part with five children. Having a dog go with you is also a good option. Our dog seems to smell snakes from far away.
Occasionally poison ivy lurks amid the dewberry vines which can make an enjoyable day of berry-picking turn into a miserable one. A trick we have learned is to wash our hands and arms within 20 minutes with soap and water if we think we accidentally touched a leaf or vine of the plant. As soon as our children are old enough to wander around the yard on his/her own, we teach them what poison ivy looks like. We make them point it out to us on our nature hikes or evening strolls. If poison ivy touches your clothes, take your clothes off and put them directly in the washing machine as soon as possible. This saves your mom from getting poison ivy on her forearms from your clothing.
Sunburn, thorns, and scratches are not really dangers, but can be annoying. Sunscreen and a good pair of tweezers help you either avoid the annoyance or make it more tolerable. Isaac for one was quite disturbed that his fingers turned purple and that a thorn pricked his finger. He will just have to learn that is the price you pay for the berries.
Now that I have covered the dangers and annoyances of berry-picking, I hope that I have not deterred anyone from taking the time to pick wild berries. We have so much fun together working for a common purpose. We all love to eat the berries. In fact, Andrew and Isaac were eating them literally by the handful out of the bucket while I was trying to pick.
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