And as fast as the season was there in peak modus to harvest whatever there was to harvest on the daily more than that I was able to manage....Well in the same pace the blackberry season also seemed to be going down again.
Yup I was making a ton of jam for the long term preservation as you can see in this post while writing about it. The jam is a good way to take out the bulk of everything and it will reduce it to a managable stack for the winter time because this stuff will remain to stay fresh for the upcoming couple of months.
But it was also time to do more with the blackberries, because jam isn't the only thing that you are able to do with it.
The first one which was a no brainer was that I had also made a serious stash in the freezer of these guys. Pluck them, rinse them in water to get all of the wildlife out (yup a lot of buggers come floating up when you do this. I also heard people rinsing fruits in water with baking soda but that is not really my cup of tea) and stack them in the freezer.
That way you can take some out when you need them. Think in smoothie bowls, think in breakfast with some yoghurt and granola when there is no time to pluck and harvest in the early mornings, you just pull some from your stash.
And honestly...they look quite good while being frozen as well. Interesting is that even though these guys were dark black when I shoved them in the freezer, they still come out red after that. Regardless, they were still perfectly sweet.
The next thing that I did with the blackberries is also coming from a bit of a jam failure. For some reason not all of the jams that I had made were stiffening up the way I would want them to.
They remained more than liquid and looked more than sirup than they did like jam. Which was the perfect reason for me to actually start using them as a sirup. Toss them into some plain sparkling water and you have a nice summer drink.
Or even better, toss it into some kinds of wodka or gin drink, add an umbrella in there and you have the summer booze cruise that will make you feel on vacay in an instant.
Or......use the sirup into the plain old yoghurt and all of a sudden you have a fruity variation of something so simple. There is a lot more to do with all of this than I had realized.
Well I am not sure than the season is entirely done for the blackberries already honestly. I still see a lot of new branches which also have green berries working their way into becoming ripe.
But I also see a lot of branches which had bushes of good fruits that shrunk and went into 'I-am-done' modus before I even had the chance to harvest them.
Now it has been very dry so I can imagine the soil is also dry and doesn't have enough juice in there for the berries to form. But I always thought that the berries were using the fluids from the leaves on the same branch and that is why after the harvest these branches actually die off entirely.
Also you can see that the nigh temperatures are starting to go down in a rapid pace and I am not sure that the berries like this.
On the other hand...When I am walking in the woods, the berries there are still growing like a madman, so maybe my berries were just a bit too early as they catch full sun?
I'm not sure at all. I do know this was my biggest harvest ever and als there I'm not sure if that is because of how I treated the plants, or if just the outdoor circumstances were perfect. Who knows...
For now, I still have berries for the next couple of months to munch on and I am just super happy with that in general!
