The raspberries are ripening! The sun is shining! … and so fruit-picking time begins for 2014!
But before the fruit-picking can begin, the first job is to dig out my old and trusty recycled containers. There are those that I like to take out with me for holding the berries whilst I’m picking. Then there are those that fit together well for storing my fruit in the freezer. My many containers come in useful different shapes and sizes. It seems WordPress must have read my mind this week when choosing “Containers” as the topic for the Weekly Photo Challenge!
I love foraging for wild fruit. We spend many happy Summer hours fruit-picking. We’re lucky as we have a good variety of wild fruits growing nearby to us. For me fruit-picking is such a calming and tranquil activity – a chance to slip away from busyness into my own little world for a short time.
The raspberries are the first of our fruits to ripen, so I’m usually picking them by mid to late July. They grow in a rather overgrown but sheltered spot, which is lovely in the warm sun. I get so absorbed in seeking out and picking the fruit that I always end up with more than a few nettle stings when I’m finished! ‘No pain, no gain’ … so the saying goes!
As raspberries are rather soft and easily squashed, I tend to pick them in small batches. I take a shallow recycled tub to hold the raspberries – I’ve had some of my foraging tubs for years, but they are ideal for this job.
When I return home, the raspberries are washed and checked over. The berries are either eaten immediately for quick and easy desserts or I put them into a container and place them in the freezer. Sometimes my sons come along to help with the picking, then even more of the berries get eaten immediately! … including before the raspberries actually arrive home, as you might imagine!
Over the next few weeks more batches of raspberries will be picked and frozen. As I gradually amass a good quantity of berries in the freezer, we begin watching out for the apples ripening. They also grow close by to us, so we’ve not far to go to keep checking them. … and then it will be time for jam-making to begin!
J Peggy Taylor
It sounds fun and also they look so tasty:) Are they sweet or sour? We don’t have raspberries here.
It is a fun and relaxing way to spend a sunny hour in July 🙂 Raspberries are a soft fruit and are quite sweet and juicy with their own distinct taste – we love them 🙂
Nothing better than freshly picked wild berries! I find more of the black raspberries in the wild here than the red ones. At the moment, our wild blackberries are beginning to ripen and they are sweet this year. I love blueberries but the largest patch I know is a very long drive away, so you have to get there at the right time, otherwise they are still unripe or the bears have done the picking for you 🙂
Absolutely! We are lucky to have various types of wild berries that we can pick quite close by – the raspberries are usually first, then bilberries (they’re our tiny wild version of blueberries), rowan berries, blackberries, hawthorn berries and at the end of the Summer into early Autumn there are the elderberries too. I must say our biggest competitors for the berries tend to be birds – and rather easier to deal with than bears, I imagine! But we always do make sure we leave plenty for the birds too 🙂
Ohh! Didn’t know that raspberry is a wild fruit. Happy to know about a fruit that isn’t available in my place. Nice photographs Peggy… Happy fruit picking!
We have a lot of wild raspberries growing near us here in the north of England. But most often they are cultivated I think. Oh yes, I was out enjoying the sunshine … and raspberry picking … just earlier today 🙂
Wild raspberries – lucky you!! 🙂
Ah yes! I think wild raspberries are one of the advantages of living in the North 🙂